Adult Education

Starting in about 1964, I began to teach Adult Education, an evening program designed for adults with special interests including auto mechanics, cooking sewing and art. This seems to be gone now. I just tried to see if it still existed, but our world has changed and at least for Howard County, Maryland, there seems to be no such programming.

Adult Education was basically a hobbyist escape, I think, and was a great deal of fun for me as the teacher and seemingly for my class, and most of the others with which I was familiar. Even later my father-in-law, himself a long standing adult ed participant (auto repair) in the Baltimore City Schools, became a teacher when he retired to Florida. He was teaching Lucite Design in one of the Dade County, Florida High Schools late in the evening.

I taught Oil Painting on Tuesday evenings from 7:00 until 9:30 (I think). The fee was $1 for the entire course and I was paid (I have no memory of the amount but it was worth driving back to the area after dinner to do it). The only requirement I had was to collect the dollar on the first night and register the people, turn in the money and the registrations, keep attendance and turn in the attendance report at the end of each month. You had to maintain a certain number to continue the class. I think it required about 10 or 12 to start and you had to maintain an average of 7 to keep teaching.

The people were fun, and we were in the art room in Howard High School. We had desk tops that leaned back so they sort of turned into easels. The regular teacher, Morris Green, was a friend and I tried to make sure we didn’t mess up the place.

My job was to give out a materials list, look over the materials everyone had to start with and get them started on projects. Given the set up of the room, it was pretty much each person working separately on their own projects. It was basically a night out for everyone in the room. They also got to use paints probably gotten for Christmas, and not worry about messing up their living rooms.

We talked about painting grounds, varnishes and mediums, and all the painting terminology long since forgotten by me. I had people of all ages and backgrounds, and even a few married couples every term or two.

I usually had enough to start the class and was able to keep it going most of the months.

It was not exciting for me, as I was tired at the end of the day. It was not exciting for the students as they were tired at the end of the day. But, we all were motivated enough to keep going at it and a few stars came out of the group. All in all we had a good, educational time. I believe I kept it going for four years before I finally had to turn in my brushes.

The incident that stands out in my mind as the funny point and the low point simultaneously in this experience was a small, but memorable question.

A woman, painting a small (9’X12”) canvas board picture of a fall scene, was copying it from a small, standard travel postcard. It was a “Somewhere in Pennsylvania” card with trees filling the landscape. She had her sharpened pencil poised over the postcard as she was doing this painting. She pointed to a spot on a medium sized tree and using a small magnifying glass to see it said, “See that leaf, how do you make that color?” My best guess was at that time the leaf in question, if one could discern it from the mob, was less than 1/32” square.

The funniest part, given my need for the extra job and my general enjoyment of Tuesday nights, was to answer the question seriously, which I did. She mixed the color for the leaf I couldn’t possibly see, even with the eyesight of a 22 year old teacher, with my help and thanked me for the answer, whatever it was.

If that didn’t get me off of teaching, I was sure nothing ever would.