First Day of Teaching a Fashion Design Class

So as you can tell from my really creative title, today I taught my first class ever!!! Never thought I would say that in a million years. You know when you're little and people ask you what you want to be when you grow up and your answer is either teacher, firefighter, or barbie because that's all you really know? Well, I can check my kindergarten dream job off the list.

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My professor from college, who I look to as a mentor, reached out to me about a teaching job at a summer camp, teaching fashion design. Of course, I was so flattered that she thought of me for the job, I couldn't say no and I didn't want to because I would have never thought about going for a teaching job, if it weren't for her reaching out about it. (Also, while you're scrolling though the very short list of design jobs, you can't pass up an offer like this that pretty much gets handed to you). I'm really happy it worked out and I'm so excited for this new experience. It's perfect. Just 6 weeks long, teaching what I love to do. I really hope my students come to love it, too. I think what makes a good teacher and a fun class, is having the person you're learning from be excited and passionate about what they're teaching, so I really hope these students pick up on that.

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What I had them do to start the class, was create little mood boards/collages by cutting inspiration pictures out of magazines. The point of this was to get them inspired to illustrate looks based off their boards. The previous teacher, mainly focused on the sewing, but I wanted to make sure they got a least an idea about the fashion research part of fashion design. After all, the class is called "Fashion Design" not "Sewing 101". (Not knocking the previous teacher at all!!!).We had a lot of freedom with in our lesson plans and I think the design research process, including making the boards, is the part that's the most fun and really the bases of your whole collection, so potentially the most important and I wanted to make sure I included it somehow. Obviously, there are so many more steps within the research processes. Coming up with a concept, sketchbook pages(if you're in school for fashion design), fabric boards, etc. But unfortunately, the classes are only a week long, so every week I get new students and there's no way I could fit all of that in in just a week. If I could, I would!!

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So, here are picture's of my first round of student's mood boards. They picked up on the concept of mood boards right away and came up with some really cool collages. They honestly exceeded my expectations which I'm so happy about!

Can't wait to see what more creativeness tomorrow brings!