Bridge to Competence

I've been a semi-hermit the last couple of weeks--due to seasonal allergies and a flare of foot pain.  Increasing my competence in little things keeps me from sinking into some murky bogs.  Learning, I realize, has always been my best bridge. 

Let me wax philosophical for a minute: when I struggle to learn something challenging, I think back to those few of my former students who struggled to read.  I particularly remember a junior high school Title 1 remedial reading class I taught at Mark Twain fifty years ago.  Some of my students barely spoke English. Others may have been dyslexic--though I had no particular  training in teaching either. I was a second year teacher (and only did this gig for a year, in a broom closet with six students per period) so I borrowed some materials from the real reading teacher and did it by the seat of my pants.  

Never mind that the district should have done more training--or at least quizzed me on my knowledge. The students and I were holed up in a windowless room and I sat beside each student, witnessed their frustration, and made up games and exercises to build a bridge between the indecipherable words on the page to meaning. On a good day, someone saw a light at the other side of the bridge and delighted in reading a word or two.  

As a young teacher, I had the natural energy of a 25-year-old and I tried to make it fun.  Now I realize, knowing more, that it must have been extremely frustrating for them to learn to decode words--a skill that had been easy for me. 

I was reminded of these classes last night as I was trying to complete the five-day challenge in the Book Club.  Previous lessons had prepared me for finding the right papers and threads, measuring, poking holes, and attaching covers.  But the previous books had been way simpler and easy to follow, so I had the satisfaction of competence from the get-go.  These coptic bindings made me feel like a kindergartener sitting in on a college lecture.

I watched the video over and over, stopping to copy each move, but my stitches looked atrocious. Luci jumped in my lap and got tangled in the long thread.  My thread kept wrapping around various items on my table.  Then the needle slid off the thread to the floor--three times.  I pulled the stitches out twice and started over.  I was in over my head and my wonky stitches didn't lie. 

At the end of the night, I had exactly what I had at the beginning: eight stacks of signatures with holes poked in the right places, a cover I'd made by gluing gel prints on book board, and the extra flourish of signature wraps, also made of gel prints. I was so deflated by my many failures (at something that looked so easy) that I planned to email the club tomorrow, tell them I'd take a sabbatical.

This morning I put the components in a box so I wouldn't have to see them ever again. 

But they niggled at my mind every time my eyes fell on that dumb shoe box. 

I'm sitting on the bridge still.  I'm intent on getting the book made and making it to the other side--to competent book binding.  

I don't need another blank book--that's not the point.  What I need is the feeling of following through and mastering it, even if it takes tutoring from Day when I see her next.  

As a quilter who gets math better than her mama, she's always been there for a quick tutorial when I want to change the scale of a book or figure out a tricky measurement.  She makes it clear with algebra and geometry and drawings and texts me a series of short videos.  I needed her today!

"Bring it when you come next and we'll figure it out together," she said--this being more of hands on project that can't be demonstrated with math and drawings. 

So until I see her, or get the courage to try again on my own, I whipped up a tiny easy book tonight, just for fun.  It was simple enough that any child could do it, but it renewed my enthusiasm and determination.  It was quietly reassuring. 

That was my bridge for today.  That and watching a fascinating video for an intricate Chinese Thread Book--the making of which will be my reward for finishing this  mess of a coptic binding.