That's why Dr. Jeanne Bergeron, who teaches teachers how to teach at the University of Miami's School of Education, nudges her students out of their comfort zone. She requires those enrolled in her undergraduate Children's Literature and her graduate Literature for Children & Adolescents classes to venture into another realm, one separate from tests and lectures.
She asks them to make a quilt, three feet by three feet with four squares, inspired by a children's book.
''Learning a new skill is always difficult,'' Bergeron says, 'and at first they're fearful. They tell me, `This is stupid. I came here to learn how to teach kids, not to learn to sew.' But it's all about the process, about what it's like to be a kid again having to try something new.''
Bergeron's students are great at writing papers and reading textbooks. Sewing? Well, that's a different story. She estimates that about 1 percent of those who enroll in her classes have ever put needle to fabric, and fewer still know about the intricate art of quilting.
''Most of them don't even know what to do when they sit in front of a sewing machine,'' she says.
MAKING A POINT
In much the same way a kindergartner may have no clue about what to do with the scribbles on a page -- which is precisely Bergeron's point.
Rebecca Matlins, a preschool teacher at Temple Judea in Coral Gables, returned to college to get a master's degree. The last thing she expected to do as a class project was a quilt. While searching for a book to illustrate, the Illinois native was also preparing for her first hurricane, Katrina. So, naturally, she selected If Hurricanes were Candy Canes, written by Jayne Bonilla and illustrated by Barbara Moss.
''I wanted to pick something that had meaning, something a child could relate to,'' Matlins explains.
Once she did, she was wracked with self-doubt as she traced pictures and transferred them to the quilt squares. ''You feel so self-conscious because it's something new that you haven't done before and you worry that it's not going to look good,'' she explains.
Bergeron, who got her start in education as a home economics teacher, finds that she has to do plenty of hand-holding and cheerleading to convince her students that yes, just like children learn to decipher words, they can learn to sew. Most of the work is done outside the class, on two sewing machines in ‘Bergeron’s UM office or at her Biscayne Park home. Depending on sill- and expectations- a student can spend anywhere from two to 20 hours to complete the assignment. Bergeron does the actual quilting.
“I learn a lot about the students that I normally wouldn’t in a classroom because I spend so many hours with them,” Dr Bergeron says. “For some, good enough is fine and they don’t worry, but for others they’ll rip out the seams as many times needed to get it perfect.
REFLECTION ESSAYS
In addition to sewing, students must also write two “reflection essays,” one before launching into the assignment, another after it’s finished. At the end of the semester, they must also participate in an exhibit on campus. Bergeron estimates that in the past four years, her students have completed hundreds of quilts.
Matlin’s quilt, along with almost a dozen others by fellow students, was exhibited at West Lab School at the UM campus on Friday. Now Matlins has to find the right person to give it to: a child who fled the Gulf Coast after Katrina and was unlucky enough to have settled in a city hit by Wilma. She’s getting help from her boyfriend’s mother, who works for the school system.
“I’m reluctant to give it to a stranger because I’ve put so much time and so much of myself into it,” she says.
In the end, donating the quilt proves to be the most difficult part of the assignment, Bergeron Says. When she first incorporated the quilt project, “Books and Blocks,” into her teaching, the quilts were usually given to elementary school kids, along with the book the quilt was based on. She thought it was a gracious final touch to an assignment that is supposed to encourage understanding and discovery of children’s literature. Her students, however, had grown attached to their handiwork and rebelled, so now they give the quilts to friends, family members and other students.
Many of them use the quilt concept in their own classrooms once they graduate. Jenifer Gerber, for instance, teaches language arts to gifted students at Eneida M. Hartner Elementary in Wynwood. She completed a quilt illustrating The Paperbag Princess by Robert Munsch, an experience that she describes as “very intimidating at first but then quite wonderful.” She gave that quilt, along with the Spanish-language translation of ;the book, to a child she sponsors in Guatemala.
THE KIDS LOVED IT
Her first quilt with her own class was as a student teacher, with third=graders who had not passed the FCAT. “The kids loved it,” she recalls. “I’d bring it in piece by piece and I could see how they took ownership of it. It made them feel good about themselves.”
Heather Keating, another Bergeron student, completed a quilt with her kindergartners using the life skills they were learning in class. It now hangs in the Gulliver Academy Library. While she looks at quilt making as” an invaluable and unpredictable way of having students internalize the lesson,” she also regards her own first experience of sewing as transforming.
“I had no experience before that, so it helped me understand what my students go through when I ask tem to do something,” she says. “I learned about the process of learning.”
|
