Lessons from a quilt show

One of my favorite things in the world is quilting. It combines my love of math and geometry with my creative, artsy side. Its one of the few things that make me feel accomplished, invigorated and relaxed all at the same- I love it. This past weekend I had the chance to go to my first ever quilting festival and it was insane! Rows and rows of the most beautiful quilts I had ever seen. More quilts than I could look at in the several hours I was there.

 

At first I was awestruck. Then I started looking a little more closely, trying to determine just how some of the stitching was done. And that's when I saw it - a wobbly line with uneven stitches. I was shocked! This was a quilt festival full of award-winning quilts and here I was staring at a non-perfect quilt! I was more critical of the next quilt- I noticed all the points weren't matched up just right. I thought about my own quilts.

At first all I see is a thing of beauty, representing hours and hours of hard work. Then I look a little closer and I start to see the mistakes; the dropped stitches, crooked lines and points that have gone askew. Everyone else just sees a beautiful quilt despite its flaws.

That reminded me of how teachers are sometimes. We often get bent out of shape when lessons don't go exactly how we wanted or the wifi goes down and we have to switch gears right in the middle of an activity, most of which are completely out of our control. What other see as a beautiful piece of work, we tear apart in our minds and only focus on the piece we forgot or the kid that talked so much we only got half way through the lesson plan.

Students and other teachers are often in awe of what we are able to accomplish when all we see are the slip-ups. Let's try to all take a minute and look at our day the way others see it; the way we often look at other educators. See how awesome you did at adjusting the plans for the day when the fire alarm when off and took half your math block away. How you dealt so calmly with that defiant child that most students didn't even know you had to have him escorted out by an administrator.

I realized that even award-winning, quilting teachers make quilts with mistakes. That I needed to change my perspective, to stop stressing over the little mistakes and see the overall piece for all its beauty.

 Educators too need to step back from the small hiccups, change their perspective and see how in the big scheme they are making an amazing difference. Most likely there is another teacher looking at you, awestruck with how "perfect" your lessons, your class, your students are. Cut yourself some slack and enjoy all the things that went just right today.