Most of the pottery activity in the Kootenays revolves around the
school as there are no full time studio potters in the area ani very
few amateurs. In line with a general trend which is bringing many
young people out of the cities to homestead, a number of students
have stated a desire to live and work here after graduation. The
community certainly needs them and it is not a bad place to Live.
From the big city standpoint, it may not be exactly where the
action is but as one graduate said to me, "nobody hassles you
here if your hair is a little long".

Walter Dexter

——

CERAMICS AND THE TEACHER -
ONE VIEW.

How can a teacher best help a student to prepare himself to teach
ceramics ? First, realize and accept the fact that a person does
not finish university possessing the depth of knowledge, the
wealth of experience or the highly polished skills that he will
have attained through experience during the years after graduation.
Second, within any given class of students there will be almost

as many levels of development and degrees of interest as there

are students in the course. And third, though each student has
verbally committed himself to some area of the teaching profession
all will vary greatly in intensity in terms of their desire to teach.
Consequently it is essential to design a flexible program, This
program must provide the opportunity to develop the basic skills of
the potter, It must also provide stimulation which causes the
emphasis to be placed on each student to develop his own ideas.
A student should have the freedom to develop and increase his
sensitivity not only to the materials of the potter, but to the many
related areas such as social studies, sciences and other forms of
the expressive arts. The spectrum of ceramics is broad and a
program daveloped for teachers should includ= many parts of that
spectrum.

In an era which manages to excuse lack of self-discipline with 2
few short words such as "that's not my bag" or "I'm doing my own

thing" it is easy to find yourself as a teacher straddling a
9.