[Ponte Alto] Seeking Advice for Teaching a class.

[Ellen Davis]

Irene,

I think your class ideas sound fantastic!!!  (plus I've gotten
interested in Koh-do myself over the past few weeks, so you can have me
as a test audience as many times as you want!  <g> )

I also think testing it out on an Asian Night is a marvelous idea.
Would you want to plan something like this for our April meeting?

If you are interested, the class registrations for the upcoming
Atlantian University in June close on March 15th.  We are actually
trying to get together the class listings for a Japanese track at that
session, although I think we may have a full track at this point.  If
you are not comfortable teaching your class that soon, though, that's
perfectly fine (I'm going to be teaching in June for the first time and
I need to get things together!)

As for Pennsic, though, I strongly urge you to go for it, and I believe
class registrations may already be open.  (Ideally, for such a class you
could use the akunoya that Ii-dono and I are planning in Tengu-san-ji
camp as a teaching space-- we are planning to outfit the interior like a
Heian shinden-zukuri mansion, so if everything comes together as hoped,
it will be a great period space for classes and such.  That still needs
to be confirmed with the other members of the encampment, though.)

REALLY looking forward to working with you on this,
Aine/Hikari

 "Killing is wrong. And bad. There should be a new, stronger word for
killing. Like 'badwrong', or 'badong'. Yes-- killing is 'badong'. From
this moment, I will stand for the opposite of killing: 'gnodab'." -- The
Chosen One, "Kung Pow!: Enter the Fist"

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Subject: [Ponte Alto] Seeking Advice for Teaching a class.

--
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I am thinking of teaching a class on Kodo.   Kodo is the Japanese
Incense
ceremony.   I am brand new at teaching and would be most grateful for
the
advice of all the wonderful teachers in Ponte Alto.

Ultimately, I'd like to teach this at Pennsic.  But, I don't think I
should
start there :^ ).  I am already planning to talk to the Asian Nights
group
about testing my class on them.  But I feel I would need more than one
practice session on this.  I could victimize members of my family... but
let's face it... not everyone has an 'SCA' mindset ;^ )  Does anyone
have any
suggestions on how else to prepare?  (Are there any interested 'victims'
out
there?)

Supplies and fees to students:   What's a reasonable limit on this?  My
most
expensive supply appears to be a calligraphy brush.  It will raise the
class
fee from $4-5 to $7-10.  I really want to include the brush because I
don't
want to ask students to wash them for the next group.  Nor do I want to
have
to do it myself if they do not do a good job.  Finally, without the
brush
they have no chance of going back with their stuff and repeating the
class.

Time:  I can break the class up into 2 to 3 classes at an hour each.
But,
they would kind of have to be done in progression by the students (IE:
each
one is a pre-requisite to the next).  It could go something like this:
       First class would be a history of Kodo, an explanation of how the
ceremony works, plus burning some interesting incense that you don't run
into
every day. No conducting the formal ceremony in this class.
       Second class would be the actual kodo ceremony and nothing else
(and
doing this in an hour is pushing it.
       A third class could given to let students practice actually
conducting
the kodo ceremony themselves.  More explaination of the materials and
tools,
and how to use them, would go into this class.
       A possible 4th class could be taught in the future to actually
make
the tools.  They are a bit unique, and buying a rudimentary toolset from
the
vendors costs $80!  The cups can be a fortune!   I would talk about this
in
the third class, and we could make them in the fourth class.

The other option is to just do a 2-3 hour class, depending on whether
the
students get to practice conducting kodo themselves.

Thank you for your kind consideration of my questions.

YIS,
Irene Madhaidin
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