Aide Finds Own Triumph in Learning

By Cindy Reitzi
Madison substitute teacher

Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh,
Here I am at Camp Granada.
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining…
— Allan Sherman

This summer I went to “pottery camp” out in Nature, learned to throw pots, and got rained on a lot. It didn’t dampen my spirits.

Walking into “Communing with Clay,” I expected a class of beginners, like myself. Instead, I met mostly “experts:” art teachers, potters, and proficient art students, most of whom were half my age. Don Hunt, our instructor, is a potter, an artist, and has taught sculpture and pottery for 30 years. Initially, I felt like one of the Wright Brothers at a seminar on rocket science. Fortunately, “Communing” also stressed community and a relaxed, cooperative atmosphere.

I’m not an art teacher, nor do I have an extensive background in art. I just wanted to learn how to throw pots, something I’d never done before. Personally, I think teachers should learn something new from scratch on a regular basis, something outside of their areas of expertise. It’s important to be a beginner again, to think uncomfortably and not intuitively, and to learn from Ground Zero, step by clumsy step, a different way to think or do or create. If we are to model good learning and have empathy for our students’ feelings of ignorance and their struggles and triumphs in learning, we must experience that ourselves.

Focusing your attention on the discrete steps to throw a pot on a spinning wheel is a little like learning to drive a car with a manual transmission. You learn the mechanical steps: step on the clutch, put the car in gear, ease off the clutch as you give it gas…kill the engine…until you learn to coordinate these steps into the rhythm and control that is the process of driving a car. Throwing a pot also has discrete, coordinated steps in the process: centering a ball of clay, opening the center, and then shaping the clay into a form — the part where you can easily “kill the engine.” Learning this process requires focus, patience, a philosophical “it’s only clay” attitude, and a sense of fun.

Like most good teachers, Don made it look easy. After he demonstrated some basics of throwing, we were off to work on our own. I decided to sit next to two art teachers, Bob Smith and Pat Reiher, who were very helpful to me. Bob lent me tools and Pat answered my immediate “what am I doing wrong?” questions.
I started to throw one ball of clay after another in search of anything resembling a form that I could save as my first “pot.” I concentrated on all the beginning steps that make first-time learning clumsy and that require repetition. I focused on how to hold my hands, sit, support my arms, and when to keep my arm stiff or when to relax. I experimented with how to keep my fingers stiff and the same distance apart to raise the walls of a pot and how fast or slow to pull the clay. At times, I was so focused I blocked out everything around me.

At one point, my attention broke from a particularly contentious ball of clay and I looked over at Bob. Bob is a large man who threw shot put for the UW Track Team. I thought it was ironic that he was now making breakable things for a living. Bob was busily creating a pottery structure the size of a small whale, while I was struggling with something the size of a Petrie dish. I had two choices: I could feel inadequate or I could learn from all the artists around me. Not suffering from an excess of pride, I chose the latter.

I learned that throwing a pot is a curious balance of controlling the clay and working with the clay. Usually, the clay argued with me: I wanted to make a cylinder, the clay wanted to be a bowl. At one point, Don came over and showed me how to hold my fingers for a particular technique. Then he said, “These are your eyes.” Something clicked a little about thinking that way and the conversation with my clay went a little smoother. Still, each time I threw I was fascinated to see what the clay would come up with. At this point in my learning curve, the clay is still in charge. Although by the end of the week I was proud of my modest row of little pots.

Usually childhood is the time that we learn the basics, the building blocks of our education, but with any beginning creative or academic effort, there is triumph in learning something new. We go back to childhood experiences of being a beginner again. When teachers experience those feelings, they can better relate to their students’ own excitement at overcoming obstacles or creating something they’ve never made before. For me, the satisfaction is “getting it” when I didn’t “get it” before. The universal joy of saying, “I made this” is as fresh today as in childhood. Better still, when you play with clay, you get to play in the mud again.