And, did it ever.
The instructor was an excellent teacher. She came well prepared, and stocked with materials, ideas and stories to weave it all together. I came looking for some technique improvements to my own tying, and came away with at least 3 very significant ones. I have been tying flies, mostly self-taught, for 21 years and to pick up 3 significant tying technique improvements after all this time is pretty amazing. The instructor really had her content area down. She broke down every conceivable piece of this style of tying—material selection, material placement, pattern silhouette, colour, tying techniques, tool choice—to its smallest component. She brought in a swim tank to demonstrate the silhouette she wanted us to achieve, and showed us why. That also allowed her to demonstrate common mistakes in material selection (dang, the cheap stuff really makes for a bad fly) and proportion.
She worked through each step, slowly and methodically, and really taught us a tonne along the way. She would demonstrate a step, and then we would tie it. She would critique, we would fix. She would do a demo on the vice—good technique vs. bad technique, good material choice vs. poor material choice, full presentation vs. sparse presentation—and then plunk that step into the swim tank to show us the differences. The session was just over 4 hours long, and in that time—gets this—I tied...wait for it...one fly! And, it was a nice one. Really nice.
Good teaching and quality assessment are not exclusive to school classrooms, and the qualities of each can be translated to many settings. Good teachers, no matter where they are, are good teachers. Good teachers are prepared with content, materials and resources. They anticipate questions throughout their lesson and use those predictions in their lesson planning. They ask good questions that stimulate thought and provoke critical thinking, pulling individuals into group discussions that benefit all, and then use feedback from those conversations to inform their practice for the next lesson. In terms of quality assessment, good teachers base their lesson planning around three key questions:
1. What is it, exactly, that I want my students to learn?
2. How will I know when they learn it?
3. What will my response be if they don’t
Our instructor knew exactly what she wanted us to learn, and came with examplars, both good and bad, to show us what we were to do. We followed her steps to create our own examplars, which she could then critique and adjust and have us redo (as necessary) until they were correct. She was patient with a broad range of tying experience and skill within the group, and able to allow for individual quirks to shine through for individual people. Saying that, she was also confident enough stop her students when they strayed too far off course, and graceful enough to pull them back without making them feel bad. All in all, she did a masterful job.
I really couldn’t have asked for any more.
Thanks April!
