Catherine Baumgardner
Teaching
What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?
I have always enjoyed learning and teaching. I remember as a young girl, I would sit around our dinner table voluntarily recapping all I learned that day, believing I was also educating my family on things they did not know…usually beginning it with the phrase, “My health book says…” Which would be said so often it became a family joke.
Looking back, these were the inner sparks of loving to teach others what I was currently learning.
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What Do I Do Now?
God has repeatedly brought teaching to my path. He led me into a fast in 2001. I was seeking Him on what to do in life and praying, “All I know is I don’t want to move to Dallas and I don’t want to teach.” Out of the blue, a teaching job in Dallas came to me within 24 hours of that prayer. Due to my heart being prepared through the fast (and other miraculous events that happened around this), I knew without a doubt that this is exactly what He wanted me to do. It led to six of the most difficult years of my life. But, since the call was so miraculous, I knew I was in the center of His will. It grounded me in my hardships and grew me as a Believer even more.
I was emergency certified to teach high school theatre, therefore, I had not gone through "educational classes" in college. During my first year of teaching, and through many tears as to how hard it was, I learned that not all students learn the same. Through observation of my teaching and the students' work, I learned there needs to be consistency with grading, clear expectations on the class, and a well-planned course with challenging, engaging assignments. I understand that this is all obvious now, however, having not gone to school for a teaching license and "never wanting to teach", my trial was one of fire and the desire to grow and be better at teaching than I currently was demonstrating. So, these lessons I was learning came through pure observation and learning what I needed to do to get better. I ended up teaching at Mesquite High from 2001--2007. I resigned so I could pursue acting and learn to be a wife (as a newlywed in April of 2007). John Kline, head of the Fine Arts in MISD, asked me to come back and cover the spring semester at North Mesquite High in 2008. The theatre teacher left and they were in a bind. I was honored at his request and took him up on it.
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Surf City, USA
Through another set of incredible God-events, my husband and I moved to California in 2010 for each of us to attend grad school. Upon graduation at California State University in Long Beach, my professors wanted me to stay and teach and even take over the costume program once the matriarch retired. I was honored, and saw yet again, without searching out a teaching job, God was leading me to teaching. I ended up teaching at CSULB from 2010—2018. During my time there, I learned the benefit of critiquing one’s own work and the work of others. At first, it may be difficult to articulate what is or isn’t working on a project. It can be tough to hear critique from others. Simply stating “it’s good” or “it’s bad” isn’t a critique one can learn from. However, identifying why something is working vs. why it isn’t is very important not only in the arts but in most areas of life. Therefore, I see the grave importance for students to learn how to properly critique their own work and the work of others. By teaching students this skill, they can articulate their opinions while also providing an opportunity to realize how to be gracious in criticism to others. It also opens the door to evaluate their own work through the “audience’s eye.” This helps the student to become a better artist and collaborator moving forward. I have taken this another step further with my own personal journey with God. In grad school, I was really struggling with my work being my identity. So, this led me to a fast to give it to God and have Him reveal truths to me in this journey of me and my work. He revealed to me in mighty ways that my work is not WHO I am. It is something I DO by the grace of God. After this experience, I painted a verse that we still have framed in our house, "Lord, you give us peace. All we have accomplished is from you." (Isaiah 26:12) This journey of divorcing myself from my identity being my work helps me have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset (terms I learned through Dr. Carol S. Dweck's book, Mindset). If I have a growth mindset, I am learning. I am accepting and enjoying the challenge. Failure is part of the journey and not something to beat myself up over. Therefore, I teach my students this same concept in all of the classes (and I teach my own kids this practice). A fixed mindset keeps one stuck on what they know they will be praised for because they know they will be negatively critiqued, receive a low grade, or fail. Failure, for a fixed mindset person, is not an option. That is a scary and mentally taxing place to hang out in for all of your life. Therefore, I embrace a growth mindset. When my "old self" creeps in to my mind telling me lies about my identity being in my work, I have to speak aloud the truth that God has reveal to me. My craftsmanship is His.
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And Not-So-Green West Texas
In 2018, Dawne Meeks reached out to me asking if I would take over Sandy Freeman’s position at ACU. I told her, "no." And, I kept telling her "no" for six months. I was very happy where I was at CSULB and we were expecting the birth of our daughter. California was our home in so many ways. However, even with me telling her "no", we knew we needed to seek God about what His answer was. Jason and I have lived our 17 years of marriage in leaning in to wherever God is moving. So, we prayed and fasted and sought the Lord to see if He was opening this door for a move to ACU. And, He was.
(For the full story of this transition from CA to TX, click here…you won’t regret it.)
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Teaching Teaches Me
Through teaching high school for seven years, teaching at a conservatory for two years in Dallas, teaching at CSULB for eight years, and now ACU for five, I have learned much in regards to teaching and I am STILL learning.
I have learned to constantly assess my students’ learning:
​Are they learning/do I see progress?
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I measure this through the work I see them do on the assignments.
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I challenge them in the growth mindset vs fixed mindset
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I want failure to be an option because if it isn’t, I’m not challenging the students enough and they will have continue viewing "failure" as a negative thing. When the possibility of failure is there, the “normal” two responses I have seen from myself (in life) and others is to either 1.) Give up (Fixed Mindset) or 2.) Focus in and push myself/oneself to try hard (Growth Mindset). I want to teach students the latter. I do this by helping them identify the lie they are believing if failure happens and to understand that failure is not a bad thing; it's a learning opportunity to further asses the problems to solve.
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Another way I assess the students' learning is through their assignments.
Are they turning in their work? If not, why not? Is this due to giving them too much to do in too little time? Did they not understand the assignment? Is it because the student did not manage his/her time well?
I set up my classes so each assignment builds on the next. The students can’t move on to the next assignment unless they have understood the current assignment. This allows me to adjust where needed if a concept wasn’t grasped and it also provides the opportunity for the final to demonstrate a full arc on what they have learned. For instance, in my costume design class, they go from struggling with:
1. How to sketch
2. Understanding body proportions
3. How clothes can be drawn to look like they are going around the body and not sitting on top of the body
4. What?! There are five areas of design?
5. Color mixing/Color Theory
6. Painting
7. Research
8. Character development as it pertains to clothing
9. Breaking down a script as it pertains to costumes
Then, their final is a set of water-colored costumes for eight characters from a story. It is rewarding to see the final designs and how the student grew from that list above.
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I schedule out all lessons for each class before the semester begins. This is included in every syllabus. This allows me to be efficient and effective with the time in class and allows the students to understand the vision of what they will learn. Due to the unpredictable learning curve for each class, if I see a skill is taking longer for the class to grasp, I adjust the schedule to allow for more instruction in that area. Then, we are able to get caught back up with the schedule once the concept is grasped. Since the entire semester is preplanned, the needs of each class can be effectively met with simple adjustments to the course lessons.
Above all, ethics is the tethering line in my approach to teaching. I demonstrate a high level of ethics so my students witness this and trust what I say. I emphasize how ethics overflows into the workplace and work relationships. I always strive to remain positive in all circumstances during class, because negativity breeds more negativity. I want my students to find my class as a positive, encouraging, safe environment in which they can learn more about themselves as costume designers, as artists, and as students. I have found a respectful, positive, ethical environment teaches my students the principles in which they can apply in the classroom, the workforce, and any facet of their lives.
My Teaching Pivots
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THEA 230.01 FASHION AS A CULTURAL REFLECTION:
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I first took Fashion History with Sandy Freeman in 1998. The internet was only beginning. Not a lot of content was available online. Therefore, there was a lot of memorizing of facts and years in this class. Fall of 2019 was my first time to teach Fashion History, properly labeled “Fashion as a Cultural Reflection”. This is a required course for all theatre majors and minors. As I thought about how to teach this class, how to make it relevant for all of those taking the class and not just gear it towards costume design students, I knew I should not make it about memorizing years and terms. The reason for this is the internet. Anytime someone would need to know the name of a common sleeve type in 1870s, they could look it up quickly on the phone in their pocket. With this in mind, I asked myself, “What should they walk away with knowing? Why is this an important class to make a requirement for our majors and minors?” I came up with these things:
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Being able to identify how and why fashion affects our culture and how our culture affects our fashion.
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Fashion is so closely intertwined to what is happening in the world, and history repeats itself. So, what societal patterns do you see repeating itself and how can we avoid society pitfalls since history will and does repeat itself?
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Identifying key silhouettes of periods as it reflects how society viewed men and women
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Breaking down scenes in films per period to see how social etiquette, male/female roles, and socio-economic groups are represented
I still did group quizzes and class games to help them gain the information in multiple ways, but I created this class to be a class they could take in the whole picture of garments and culture and not be weighed down with memorizing many dates and terms.
Each fall, I tweak the assignments a little and how the layout in the semester has to happen. I remember a student wrote on one of the “Fashion Class” evaluations that they only wanted to do one film presentation and not two, that doing a second one (even though it was a different period) felt repetitive. So, I took that in to consideration and the next time I taught the class, I made the second film assignment into a museum curator assignment. The student could work with a partner or by himself/herself to create a museum show of garments from a time-period. They had to decide where the show would take place, give the show a name, and have garments, historical facts, and a deep dive I didn’t cover in the class. (For a look at my grading sheet for this click here.) This turned out to be so fun. I really liked it and it was from taking a note from a student and seeing how I could revamp an assignment.
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The Global Pandemic
In the fall of 2020, due to Covid restrictions on spacing, I had to make a class size shift (like most teachers on campus.) I divided the class up and taught group A on Tuesdays and group B on Thursdays and spaced the students out in the classroom. I made sure they still received the full information as if they were attending the class two days per week. This required a lot of assignments and lectures to be shifted and many put online.
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For THEA 440 Patterning Class, I wanted my students to still sew. Therefore, I took each of them a sewing machine, dropping it on the student's home front porch with a packet of materials, printed instructions, and I made YouTube links for ever step of the process for them to watch. We met online to check progress and answer questions. It turned out really well. The pictures of students at their homes in the Patterning and Millinery student work gallery is from this 2020 class.
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THEA 331.01_ RENDERING MEDIA FOR THEATRE DESIGN:
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I taught a rendering class one semester. I was nervous to teach the class because I was not sure how to make it a class that would not focus just on “costume rendering” which I teach in the Costume Design course. When I came up with the syllabus, I wasn’t really sold on it but went boldly forward. After the first big assignment was due, everyone came back with a pitiful project that resembled a fifth grader who remembers at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday that a big tri-fold project is due tomorrow at 8 a.m. I was disheartened and blamed myself more than the students. It was clear that I had not prepped them enough in several areas: expectation of the project, given them examples, expected outcomes, and the list goes on… I was shocked to see literal poster board. I haven’t had a student use poster board perhaps ever. I certainly can’t recall a time. I told them the projects were not university level and I clearly didn’t explain the assignment well enough. I told them to re-do it without penalty. We were all going to take this as a learning experience. I re-explained the project. Gave them more examples. Explained what would come after this project so they could see the stepping stones. They had a week to correct it. What they came back with was a eureka moment for all of us. They got it and I got it. I learned how clear and articulate I needed to be with assignments in this class and in all my classes. Sarah Ann Miller, Chloe Dickson, Mikayla Lugafet, and Mariah Martin all say how much they grew from that class in exploring what the design process is and how to push yourself as an artist. I was really glad I didn’t just push forward without evaluating what went wrong and how to correct it. It made me learn and it ended up being a great learning experience for the students as seen through their evaluations of the course and their video clips included on the side bar.
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Representative Student Work:
Stage Makeup Class
Students learn techniques for stage makeup: old age, bald caps, fantasy makeup, stage blood, wounds, scars, latex, and using various materials to create prosthetics
Honor's Colloquium: Art of Felting
Students were taught how to felt and then released to work on her own design ideas. Each student had her own work of art by the end of the colloquium.
Each student learned the art of felting, created her own design and final felt project(s).
Each student learned the art of felting, created her own design and final felt project(s).
Patterning and Millinery
Each student designed and built his/her hat from the ground up.
Course Evaluations from Students:
Fall 2019:
THEA 137.12 Practicum Click Here
THEA 137.05 Practicum Click Here
THEA 227.01 Intro to Tech Click Here
THEA 230.01 Fashion Click Here
THEA 330.01 Rendering Click Here
Spring 2020:
THEA 137.01 Practicum Click Here
THEA 137.06 Practicum Click Here
THEA 137.13 Practicum Click Here
THEA 440.04 Patterning Click Here
THEA 469.M1 Stage Makeup Click Here
Why Do I Love Teaching?
Student Comments:
Nora Vellis
Mariah Martin
Hannah Raymond
Sarah Ann Miller
Easton Orr
Riley Dodd
Will Thompson
"I am in Oxford and let me tell you that your class was one of the most additive things to my experience here in Oxford."
--Macey Bridgeman
Faith and Teaching
I would say it is impossible to separate my faith from any area of my life. Maybe that is too broad and too bold a statement that a challenger would like to find a loophole in, so let me explain.
I am one hundred percent convinced of God’s love in my life and for the world. I believe He places me where I need to be, exactly when I need to be there. Therefore, I want to shine for Him, do what He wills, and be His vessel.
Just recently, I noticed my freshmen theatre students were struggling in their third week of classes. Some were near tears at being away from home, overwhelmed by classes. Listening to the Spirit speak in my own heart and observing the students, I told them to set their hand stitching work down and put it all away. I wanted to tell them a story. I told them a personal story that had happened since school began this semester. It led to me telling them how Satan lies to us about our circumstance, our relationships, and our identity. I mentioned John 8:44 “Satan is the father of lies.” He plants the lie and then watches us react. He can only know if his lie resonates based on our actions…do we retreat in tears and fear? Or do we keep going about our day receiving God’s love and speaking truth over ourselves? If he sees it has affected us, he knows it worked. I spoke to them about identifying the lies in their life. If I feel unsettled, an unknown fear, or sadness, or negativity coming over me that seems from nowhere, I ask myself, “What lie am I believing?” Once I figure that out, I then ask, “Now, what is the truth of this situation? What is the truth on my life? What is the truth on who I am?”
I mentioned John 10:10 that “Jesus came that we may have a full life.”
I talked to them for fifteen minutes on Satan’s attacks/lies vs. God’s truth. Giving them practical ways to combat the lies. Then, I released them from class a little early, knowing they needed a break and time to reflect on the truth.
I realize not all our students are Believers in Jesus. I acknowledge that in my classes. Because I have seen it helps those who believe and those who don’t to feel seen immediately. So, when I do talk about Jesus, the unbelievers tend to perk up their ears and listen instead of immediately dismissing “God talk.” For instance, in Fashion History class I begin with Adam and Eve and how clothing exists because of sin (Gen 3:7). So, right off the bat I am discussing sin and shame and redemption. In that conversation, I acknowledge that there may be students in the class who do not believe that time began as the Bible states, however, I do believe it, so I approach our timeline in this class with Genesis. This opens the class to many future discussions about faith, Bible, sin, and redemption as I teach throughout the semester. Not to mention how it all shows itself in fashion and costume design!
I bring up God in class lessons and discussions any time the topic fits. I talk about how He creates, so we create (in costume design, making garments, painting pictures). He created the science behind how color works! This astounds me and I teach of this beautiful scientific marvel when I teach color mixing. He is written all over history, so in Fashion History class, He is brought up often and one of my favorite and soul gripping things to share is when we get to the Crinoline period (US Civil War). These lessons can bring me and the students to tears of understanding and grief. In setting up the world in the 1860s, I read from Charles Finney’s autobiography. (Although a controversial figure…most people who do bold things are…) Below is one of the sections I read from his book. The classroom in so silent when I read this. It’s as if the students are holding their breath. To set up the excerpt below, Charles Finney led a revival known as “The Second Great Awakening”. It was spreading wide in the North. Here is what he wrote of that revival:
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These examples are but a fraction of integrating my Lord into my work. I am so, so grateful to be at a university that not only allows me to speak about my faith but encourages it.
