I’ve been teaching for more than 20 years as an independent contractor. That means that most of the time, I am partnered up with an organization like my county library system, an art center, shop or museum and teaching a class with them. Sometimes those classes get cancelled. There are lots of different reasons for that (like pandemics and weather) but most often it’s because there are not enough people signed up to make the math work out. So I thought I’d write a little about what I do when a class gets cancelled, especially for those of you who might be new to teaching or thinking about teaching your first class.

Don’t take it personally.

My first tip is to not take it personally. There are so many reasons that people don’t sign up for classes and almost all of them have nothing to do with you. I was supposed to teach a class tonight, which is why this topic is on my mind. We realized much later after we set the date for this one, that it falls right in the middle of spring break for the school district that art center is in. Oops. I don’t live in that district so I didn’t even think about that, but it means a lot of people are busy. I’m also a new teacher for this venue. Which means the community there doesn’t know me yet.

Before I worked as an artist full time, I was the education administrator at an art center. I scheduled all of the adults classes. It happened SO often there that we had a kind of unwritten expectation that a class would always cancel the very first time you offered it. There’s a commonly quoted stat that says someone has to see something like an ad 7 times before they will act on it. I think this is the case with these classes. People only registered the second time they saw it, thinking “Oh it looked fun, that must be popular since it’s there again, I should sign up”.

It’s really discouraging, don’t get me wrong. There’s a lot of work that goes into proposing and planning a class that can seem like a waste so I have some other things I do to try and capture some of that back in a positive way.

Talk to your partner.

Communicate with your partner org. Often they are the ones taking registrations and talking to people about the class much more than I am. What questions did people ask about the class? Was there “buzz”?

I once answered a “call for class proposals” from a shop who said their customers were super enthusiastic about a class on needle felting. But that class was cancelled without a single registration. Based on the feedback the shop got, I think it was priced too high because of the tools and materials needed to get you started in a total beginners class. In retrospect, it would have maybe been better to do a demo or a tiny make-and-take project that could act like an appetizer for class. That was valuable information.

Recently I pitched a class to one organization and they didn’t love the project and so we did something else. But I saved it and pitched the same project again to a different partner, who added it to the schedule. The students loved it so much, one suggested I do a whole series of classes based around the theme of that project. I trust my partner orgs to know their community (who they work with every day) better than I do and I think both orgs made the right call.

What can you reuse?

Classes take a lot of preparation. There is a project to design, samples to make, materials to select. When a class is cancelled, I look at what I’ve got prepared and think about how else I could use it because I’ve already done all of that work. So the first thing I think about is: could I teach this in a different format?

• Could it be an online class?
• A pattern to sell on Etsy?
• A tutorial for my blog?
• A make-along or educational posts on social media?
• Could I combine it with another project to make a more advanced class? Or simplify it more for beginners?

I almost never teach something once and drop it. I like to think of my classes having more of a life cycle that I can adapt and grow and change to use different ways.

Look at everything with a fresh eye.

“Don’t judge a book by its cover” is a really common phrase but we absolutely all do it. The title, description and photo that go with your class are a tiny bit of information that are trying to communicate so much information. I was working on proposals for a conference yesterday that had a 450 character limit to describe a 2 day class. Getting all of the info for 2 days of class into 3-4 sentences is HARD.

Before I put it out there again, I look at everything that I used to represent the class and try to change it up. Sometimes I make new samples to photograph or just take new photos of the samples I have. I look at the description and think about how I might change the focus or “vibe” of the class. Can I rewrite it to sound more casual? more structured? more technique focused? What fits with the other classes that are being taught at that venue? How can I change the title to make it more clear/fun/appealing?

I try to get someone else to read the description and ask me questions about it. What doesn’t make sense? Or have someone describe back to me what they think is going to happen in class when they read the description.

I remember working on a submitted class proposal when I was an arts admin. It was a great class: good description, good price, good project. But the class samples in the photos were so unappealing. It was a class sewing undies, which I think our audience would have signed up for, but the photos were terrible. There were three samples but all made from the same materials so they looked mostly the same and the colors were odd and unflattering. The photos were dark and looked like they’d been photographed on the floor (which made me think of dirty laundry). Those photos were not communicating all the good parts of the class.

Fill the time.

One of the hardest things about the pandemic shutdown was that I got a “sorry your class/event has been cancelled” email about once a week for months. I felt like I had been slowly crushed. The thing I learned from that was to not let my brain get into a cycle of “I was supposed to be teaching a class right now, but it got cancelled and I am a failure.” And the way to do that was to fill that time I had set aside to teach the class with something good. Over the pandemic, I illustrated a children’s book in all of my newly free time.

Since I was supposed to be teaching tonight, I am instead going to try out a new recipe for grilled paneer with a mint and cilantro sauce. I’ve never made it before so that will be a fun project because I love to cook. A few weeks ago another class was cancelled and I used that day instead to play with a new design and it turned into a new pattern for my Etsy shop; something that wasn’t on my planned goals for the year. It feels like an awesome bonus instead of something discouraging.

Imagine putting on a blindfold. Then adding some earplugs. And then stepping into a room to teach a two hour class.

I LOVE teaching virtual/Zoom classes. If there is one spot of sunshine that came out of the past few years for me, it’s the acceptance/accessibility of online teaching. I jumped in to learning the technology enthusiastically. And I now teach something via Zoom every week from my studio table. It’s awesome.

I remember one of the late-2020 classes I taught had a group of 18 or so students and every single person had their camera and microphone turned off. I’m not complaining even for a minute that everyone chose to do that. There are many reasons to NOT have your camera and microphone on and they are all good ones. I support that 100%. But what I didn’t expect was how hard it was to teach when there is no feedback at all from students. I felt a little like I had to relearn how to do it.

It takes a lot of energy.

Until I was faced with an entire screen full of black rectangles, I didn’t realize how much I relied on simple feedback like students nodding or looking up from their project to know when it was time to move to the next step. It’s a like a conversation. I share something and then students share something back with me. But when there’s no feedback, it’s like shoveling snow. You just keep scooping up the next bit and stepping forward until you get to the end and then you stand there panting.

“Students who vigorously nod: you are life itself.” This quote popped up today in my Instagram stories and I couldn’t agree more. Those nods and smiles and thumbs up are like little shots of espresso. More so than I ever imagined.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to write this post with a few “Teacher Confessions” or things that I suspect students don’t know but that make my job a thousand times easier and more fun.

1. Questions are never dumb.

I was thinking about a class I taught a few weeks ago. It was a small one and started out with everyone watching quietly from their black boxes for the first 45 minutes. But then someone unmuted and asked a question. And it was like that broke the ice. Soon there was another question and then a comment. And then a “me too” in the chat. And suddenly we were having a conversation.

I wanted to give that first question-asker a shiny gold star sticker! With an in-person class, I can watch and see if anyone looks puzzled or is struggling with a step and I can show a demonstration a different way or explain it differently or do it again. I watch for that. But virtually, I can’t see what anyone is doing so I don’t know when to repeat or move forward. Until you ask a question.

2. Sharing is even better than questions.

I am not one of those teachers who believes anything is “my way or the highway”. I’m there to show you the way I do a thing to get a specific result, but I know that there are always many ways of accomplishing that end result, sometimes more and less successfully. In another class we were working on something with a specific step that we did over and over. So we all had some time to practice this new skill. After a few repeats, someone asked a question and instead of just me answering, another student added “I moved my hand this way and tried this” and someone else said “It was easier for me when I tried it this way”. That, my friends, is like winning the lottery. Not only did I learn a new way of thinking about it, but everyone else now had three ideas for ways to do this thing instead of just one.

3. Questions + sharing = community experience.

There’s an invisible thing that I think happens when everyone is participating in the conversation too. When someone asks a question, you might think “Oh I wondered that too.” or “That makes so much sense now to me too.” If you try something another student suggested, you suddenly have something in common with that other person too. It’s a shared experience or something you did together. You had the same question, tried the same thing, had the same success or flop. Suddenly it becomes something “we” did, instead of something “I” did. It’s a little like that feeling of watching a movie in the theater and everyone lip synchs the line “My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” It makes you a part of something special. You walk away with a smile.

As teachers we all say “Please ask questions” but the confession part is that I really do mean it. It helps me as much as it helps you (and probably everyone else too.)