Thoughts of the Lady in the Tower

2004-06-15 - 10:38 a.m.

Teaching the Art of Being a Noblewoman

I'm teaching my Art of Being a Noblewoman class tonight for the barony (at least, those who bother to show up. I'm betting there will be no more than 1/2 dozen).

It's an interesting class (check my memories if you want more info on it, I'm too busy to dig out the links today), but this is the 5th or 6th time I've done it. It needs to morph.

For one thing, I've collected too much information and typically get too many questions to fit into an hour. For another . . . I've been teaching the same class for nearly two years now? And while it's not the same, from the outside it looks the same. It just needs an overhaul.

I've been trying to figure out what to do for about 6 months now (since just after the last time I taught it, which was in October). I'm leaning towards breaking it into several parts, but the divisions are what trip me up.

Right now I'm leaning towards "Dress and Accessories" and "Behavior" as the two divisions. There's just so much overlap, though. Like bad posture can sabotage your efforts to wear long dresses and can be corrected with certain types of garb, but also it can make a curtsy look REALLY terrible.

I've also considered division based on questions I typically get asked. Court behavior is a BIGGIE, and it constantly puzzles me. EVERY newcomer court class teaches you how to enter and leave court. Sure, there's a little discussion in handling your skirts that touches on my class, but since ALL women (half of the US population, I'm not sure what percentage of SCAdian newcomers, but let's call it half) are supposed to wear skirts, shouldn't the newcomer court classes also mention ways to avoid falling on yourself as you rise from kneeling?

There's a lot of overlap based on that type of division as well. For instance, walking in long skirts is the same whether you're walking into court or around the field.

Hmmm. Have to think on it a bit more.

Did get me thinking, though, that the Kingdom Chatelaine was looking for a newcomer's track for University, so I offered to teach a intro to court class. I'll have to develop a better title and a good description for it. . .

I think I'm really nervous about teaching the Art of Being a Noblewoman tonight because the ladies have been looking forward to it for so long; I'm afraid to disappoint. I think it's better as a class with people I don't hang around on a regular basis because I do offer tidbits here and there as subjects come up.

There was the 10 minute mini-class on lacing your dress that started at a fighter practice. I started to explain some different styles of lacing to Amalia, and before I was finished I had 4 ladies listening attentively. Or Kaolin came to me and asked how to walk in a long dress because she was having trouble. They've already heard a bunch of the stuff in my class, but they're still really looking forward to it.