Guest Blog by Margaret Mathias

Catoosa High School, Oklahoma

My Classroom Sewing for the School Year 2012-2013

                This year started off no different than any other year the challenges of students without their fabric, or I forgot to bring it to school.  But after 32 years of teaching I have found some things that help to prevent some of these excuses; like bonus points for supplies that are in early, written work (bookwork) which they hate, and the fact that they have to sit away from the ones that are working on their project helps to.  The number of students that this affected was just a couple because I explained that to them this is what happens if it is not here on time.  I try to allow one month for students to get their supplies so to make sure you hit a payday. 

               Sewing is becoming a lost art unfortunately.  You see more and more sign of that with stores not offering sewing supplies or having a very limited amount available.  When Silver Dollar City took out the Quilt store I could not believe it.  So I have made it my mission to try and teach students what they can do to make things and be affordable.  I want students to love to sew like I do.  Not every student is going to like it because they do not have patience to do this kind of thing.  I know when I first started teaching  this was a real challenge because of the equipment that I had to work with; I think it was as old as I was.  But thanks to Career Tech mandating that money be spend in the Career Ed. Classes I was able to replace the ancient machines with ones that made it a lot easier to work on and students could finish their project.  Back to this year, I had a couple of students that understood and liked to sew.  These students picked out things that were more challenging and were successful.  It was neat to teach them and see that they were willing to learn.  I hope that we can keep working to bring this art back to life, with all the technology and exciting new machines that do so much for us.  We as educators need to keep up to date and offer it to the students.

 

Note from Josie:

All of us at B-Sew Inn appreciate the efforts that are made by Public & Private School Educators to KEEP SEWING ALIVE IN THE CLASSROOM. We recognize this as such a worth while goal. The skill-sets taught thru sewing, embroidery, fashion design, textiles and design entrepreneurship emphasize the rock-solid foundations of a productive society, and we don't want that forgotten. We keep pushing forward. ALWAYS.  Thank You FACS Educators