For the second part of the assignment I started in this blogpost . I decided to teach french braiding to a my 12 yo cousin. After this experience I'm pretty pleased with my self as a teacher especially for something I've never taught before! I'm also pretty pleased with my students! They did very well for only a 1/2 hr of instruction (that's all the time I could get them out of their chores for). So here's how it went!
Still getting better!
I started by showing off my skills to help my student visualise our goal. Then we went straight to the basics of braiding, three pieces, left to middle, right to middle and so on to the end. Next we tried working on our own hair. We started with trying to put up our bangs. I thought that the advantage here would be that we could see what we were doing, forgetting that braiding sideways takes a lot more practice. Next we tried letting Sara french braid straight down the back of my head. After that got to frustrating, I couldn't see what was going on to help, we enlisted the help of the 8 yo to be our model. This turned out loads better because then we could braid straight down and both see what was going on. That's where this next picture comes from, see getting better!
We even gave Heather a turn!
The worst part about teaching a skill like this is that for most people it really isn't a one time deal. You have to keep practicing and practicing. For me the other really hard part in approaching teaching this is that I had no idea what I was doing teaching. I hadn't learned the skill from anyone, I taught myself, and it is sometimes difficult to properly articulate and demonstrate something you didn't have demonstrated to you.
(story time)
When I decided that I wanted to learn how to french braid my own hair I knew I needed time. So for one month I got up an hour early for school, and practiced at it until my hair looked decent enough to actually wear to school. A year and a half later I've still got a lot to learn but I'm happy to share this entirely non-essential life skill to anyone that wants to learn!
(/story time)
This lady does a really nice job of describing the technique, but I really can't emphasise enough how much you have to practice at it.
While people have shared their knowledge of hair, and all of the cool things you can do with it, for ages that doesn't mean that we all know how to do our hair, or even teach it! If you want an interesting look into hair styles from the ages take a look here.
But back to the teaching of the matter, hair is often such an integral part of a person's personality that though we teach each other techniques and tips, ultimately how they use what they know reflects their personality and lives.
For me I love the braided look and want to keep learning about it. My next project: fishtails, also known as french plaiting. See below!
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