Mentor

Wayne Dyer had a talk he would give on the stages of human growth.  The last one, according to him, was mentoring the next generation(s).

I feel I have entered this stage of life.  And that is why I am committing myself to the Olds Master Weaving program (almost) exclusively.  (I will, from time to time, continue to teach the local weavers via the guild I belong to.  If anyone wants to study with me, they are more than welcome to come here!  Or one of the Olds programs I am teaching.)

Being a mentor does not mean you have reached a certain chronological age.  Rather it means you have reached a stage where you have a deep level of understanding that you can convey to others.

People tell me I can do this.

More importantly, I feel I need to do this.  

After being in this business for 4+ decades I have a great deal of experience.  I also have a sense of what new(ish) weavers need to learn, even if they don't know that they need to learn it.  It is one reason I keep blogging, frequently repeating the same message over and over.  Because not everyone grasps the message the first or second (or 10th) time they read it.

Sometimes people have to have developed a certain level of knowledge to understand what I am trying to convey.

And sometimes it isn't something they need to know at the time they hear it so it slips on by.

People sometimes ask what it takes to host the Olds program in their locality.  The Gaelic College is one of the locations I am teaching.  They have a fully loaded studio and a weaving instructor who was willing to get things set up.  However, you don't have to have a fully loaded studio.  The Olympia Guild had a person who was willing to do the ground work, located a facility large enough to hold the class and could be booked for five days.  She managed to locate a loom for me to use for the group warp, and acted as liaison for me and for the students.

The college does the registration, sends out class manuals, hires the instructor (in this case, moi) and pays the instructor.

I have informed Zach that I will be devoting my teaching efforts to the program and am willing to pick up more classes.  (Just in case it's moi a group is interested in!)  He said that a couple of guilds had been in touch, and who knows, the program may be growing even further.  Generally the minimum number of students is 8, maximum 12.  Since some people have Life Happen and they drop out of one level or another, having the maximum for level one means the likelihood of continuing through the other levels is higher.  OTOH, one of the benefits of the program is that, having taken level one at one location, it is possible to take the next level at a different location.

If a guild should be interested in hosting the program, they can contact Olds College and talk to Zachary Webster.  (Don't you love that the person overseeing the program is called Webster?)