Planning

I have spent more time prepping for this year than ever before-- in fact I think this may be the first time I have had the energy to do a lot of pre-planning. I was able to work with a friend who recently completed work on her Masters degree in Education, and even though she was in elementary education it was very helpful. Although I had originally intended on being a teacher, I have little formal education in the art of teaching. My background is in being a student, a higher education program assistant, and in costume design and wardrobe. However, for almost 10 years I have been "teaching" a costume lab and running a costume shop at a University. This is rather odd given that my background includes neither teaching nor working in costume construction. Over the years, I have increased my knowledge in costume construction a great deal and now I want to begin a more organized method of sharing this with my students both those who are taking a class and those who are paid assistants.

There are several obstacles to this goal. First, it has been made clear over the years by our department head and artistic director that our main objective is the show, not the students. he feels that they will learn things by being along for the ride, so to speak. Because all of our designers are NOT in residence, and in fact have only three visits to our facilities, the ride sometimes happens without them! But I cannot reduce the quality of the work in any way, so I am in the position that if something a student creates in unsatisfactory, I will need to redo it.

Second, I am "part-time" contract employee who gets paid, frankly, a pittance. One year I calculated my hourly rate, and it comes out to about $1.87 per hour. I hold a fairly challenging full-time job during the day and in order to survive monetarily I need to make sure that my day job has priority. I do not have one more minute in the day I can add to working in the costume shop.

Third, I am by my nature a disorganized person. I always complete things on time, but the path to that is sometimes fraught with procrastination. I do not feel it is fair to make other people work in a frenzy due to my procrastination, so I am often completing things alone I also spend my day job organizing other people, so often my organizational skills are completely spent before I arrive at the shop.

Fourth, I receive little to no support from the full time production staff, which includes a full time production manager, technical director, carpenter/painter and stage assistant/props master. I am, in fact, expected to seek out any information I miss from production meetings, staff meeting, and other talk during the day, either by asking or by sending a student to the meetings in my stead. I used to be angry about this, but now I just sort of laugh. There is a systemic devaluing of costumes which I feel is related to clothes/sewing/crafting being "feminine", but I can no longer fight that fight.

Finally, the outside designers are not educators. They are not doing this to educate people. Because of the part of their career path they are on, they are looking for really good portfolio pieces. Most of them are uninterested in working with unskilled students themselves, and frustrated both the part-time nature of my position and the fact that there is no separate time for students to learn skills-- they have to learn them while working on the show costumes.

The only parameter I can change is my personal disorganization. The other obstacles just need to be worked around. I am hoping by taking the time for some early prep, revising when I teach certain things to match the trajectory of the show, and by empowering students upfront I will be able to increase student learning and satisfaction while not adding significantly, and perhaps subtracting from, the time I spend at this job.

So, with this said, this year my goals are:

1. To empower the students to help themselves on projects, research, and skills building

2. To help each student improve their concrete costume constructions skills to the next level

3. To teach students in such a way that it relieves the pressure for me to complete all the costumes

4. To imbue students with a love of theatre, theatre costumes, and an understanding of WHY we do things

5. To increase students' independence and leadership skills with their peers

6. To keep the shop organized and easy to use