Welcome to Connect FCS Ed, thank you so much for listening. I'm your host Barbara Scully. On today's episode, I have an amazing educator from North Carolina, Dawn Harrison who was an industry leading professional and found her FCS calling, which now she's going into our 26th year of teaching. Dawn is also a mentor educator and has a passion for helping others. Today, we are gonna be chatting about planning a course sequence for fashion and clothing design, and I'm just so excited to have you with us today. So thank you so much for taking the time, Dawn. Welcome.
• Because you're a fashion educator and you have that industry background, do you have a favorite fabric or textile...Oh goodness, I have several. I love silk, and it's hard for me to come by because it's so expensive, but I love silk, I love just the way it's drapes, I love the way it keeps you cool in the summer and warm in the winter, but... Yeah, that's probably my absolute favorite would be silk, I try to steer clear of some of the synthetic fibers, it's hard with fast fashion, it's hard, but yeah, they're not as comfortable, especially here in North Carolina where it's hot in the summer, wearing some of those synthetic fibers there. Yeah, it's just not as comfortable, but... Yes, silk or rayon. That's another favorite of mine, just the way they drape, I love how that works.(2:21)
• When it comes to a fashion and clothing design, what are your first steps when you're looking at your new class... Well, the first thing I would say is, it depends. Like I come from a state that provides me with curriculum and the standards, all of it is spelled out for me, so I've kind of spoiled that way, there are other states that have to make these things up and make their courses up. I found that through the Facebook group that we all collaborate on, and I hear a lot of teachers struggle with that, and especially new teachers, when they're first hired and they're hired to teach all these courses and they're like, Oh my gosh, I have... Now, I don't know what to do, I don't know where to start. So that's what prompted me to write that blog post, because I think a new teacher needs to figure out a way to navigate all that, and so the first thing that you need to do, just kind of figure out, well, if you don't have state standards and you have to develop them yourself. Then you need to do some research, you need to look at... I would suggest looking at other states, reach out to... Reach out on those platforms that we have, the social platforms and just ask people, What are you doing? And once you look at other states, I still look at other states, I wanna know what other people are doing, because one of the constraints I feel when you have a state that gives you the curriculum is you don't have the ability to keep it up-to-date as much as you would like to, if that makes sense, because once a curriculum kind of launched, it's already outdated, especially for fashion, there's a huge area of technologies kind of missing, and it needs to be kind of integrated (6:59)
• An Advisory Board, What is that? Sure, and I will say when you're building a program, when you have an advisory board and you have that business and industry and colleges and universities behind you, it really gives your program some credibility and that's super important. We wanna make sure students are gaining the skills that they need for when they go on to college, or like I said, into a job. So I really think, and I've heard this from one of the professors at NC State, she was saying that students that learn sewing skills in our classes, they will go further faster than most students because at the university level, at least here in North Carolina, they're not teaching students, all of those skills anymore. So in high school, if a kid can come in knowing how to engineer a garment that's golden, and they're actually teaching their classmates, I think being able to have these people in your back pocket to ask questions, because every year is that things are changing. Fashion is so fast-moving, and if we want to stay current and we want to have programs that are relevant, and we need to have these people in our lives to help us build programs (16:44)
• Okay, so working in the high school setting, I always have to keep in my mind that our job is to really get kids excited and give them a taste or a sampling of the different topics or different career opportunities in the fashion industry. Funding is huge, and so in order to get, say, computer design programs, some of the leading ones in the industry like Lectra or Optitex, let's say, we can't afford them in the high school level, we just cannot afford them. So I've asked our advisory people, I said, Hey, what can we... What is important? They told us Adobe, Learning Illustrator, Photoshop, those things are going to be key. And those are skills that you can teach at the high school level that students are going to need in order to do some of this work in college or on the job, that's where I'm concentrating some of my efforts is learning some of those skills, so I'm able to do line sheets, let's say, or do some text style design and do some repeats and things like that, that's what I can do through Adobe. Now, Adobe is a beast to learn, and so I can't... can't devote a lot of time to that, so I have to bring in simple things and expose students to some of the simple concepts. (29:04)
• My big passion project, I just launched over the summer, and so I've had a couple of workshops, one on creativity and design, and one on garment Engineering, and my next move this fall is to offer some in the textiles of fibers, fabrics and finishes. And so I want to help teachers, I wanna empower them to be able to develop these programs, to develop opportunities for students to get the skills they need in order to be successful in this industry, but the first step is to empower our teachers... Right, and there's just not a lot of professional development around this area, and I found the things that they do have, they are not effective, and so I've wanted to share all my ideas and to empower teachers and bring professionals into the space provides some insight, an excitement around this area (35:23)
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WHEN DOES IT AIR…
SEPTEMBER 22, 2021