Eager Learners

It is Saturday, the 22nd of September. I went to the Center with a box of yarn and crochet needles. It was my hope to find girls that would be interested in learning this skillful art of crochet. Upon arriving at the gazebo with an open box, I was immediately swarmed with little girls who were eager to learn. I looked around and found no real good, clean place to sit down and tackle the project for instruction. It took me five minutes to formulate the next move. First, I had to find a clean place to sit and ended up in the original eating area on the other side of the kitchen serving window where I found a picnic table. It was my plan to have the girls who knew how to crochet already to pass on their knowledge. They did need a little reminder, but caught on quickly.

I was not sure how the younger girls would catch on. Would their attention span hold them long enough to learn a very different and fairly difficult skill taking a certain amount of coordination then what they are used to? Would the instructor share the information well enough and be patient enough to teach it?

When the first girl came to me asking to learn, I instructed her to go find an older girl who had learned previously. When she found someone, I gave the eager learner permission to pick her yarn color. Then I wanted to know if the older girl remembered the steps. Most of the time they needed a little reminder, but I could see that the ah ha light come on quickly. They caught on quickly that a girl who knew how to crochet was going to teach them, they started coming to me with their chosen instructor. They came to me saying, “She will teach me.”

Now, I have taught quite a few of the older girls and cannot remember them all. Many of them are now attending professional classes and were not available to help. Fortunately, I had taught some girls that are in that in-between stage and not quite ready for the professional classes.

Assistant professors skill sharing with their eager learners:

When the new instructor demonstrated her knowledge, she became the instructor to the eager learner. The eager learner then needed to show me what she learned. When that was accomplished, they were given approval to go on to the next step.

These steps included: (there are a variety of ways to do these steps so over time I have learned what works best for most)

making the first loop
how to hold the yarn
making the chain (they needed to be uniform in size, not to large, and not too small you cannot fit the needle into the stitch)
learning the single crochet (sc), half-double crochet (hdc), double crochet (dc) stitches

Each time I inspected the work, I asked if the assistant professor saw any problems, if not I showed the problem areas to correct. Once corrected, I gave the okay to continue. As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised at the outcome! They are all very serious at learning.

During the following weeks, I will observe one instructor/learner team at a time. It is much more orderly and manageable for me. You can watch a video of them in action here once I have a change to upload it on our LWC Missionary Moments youtube channel.

Thank you to those who donated the yarn and crochet needles. You can tell by the pictures below that they are really enjoying themselves.

Catherine

The five assistant professors available were: Tamara , Saradjine, Christina, Ketlove, Wislande (Tamara is teaching two eager learners)

There were six eager learners: Charles Meme, Taina, Tina, Islande, Oslaine, Guerline