Sneak Peek into this week Paper Talk Podcast: Teaching In-Person Workshops in the Age of Covid-19

 

Like us, you’ve probably been isolated at home for months now. So you can imagine our surprise when scrolling through Instagram and seeing that our friend, Jasmine Sing of Merremade, has already resumed in-person paper flower workshops! The pandemic is in a very different state in South Korea where she lives, but hopefully we are headed in that direction here in North America and the rest of the world. So, we took the opportunity to chat with the lovely Jasmine in our latest episode of Paper Talk about how she eased back into teaching face-to-face in the age of Covid-19. 

To keep herself and her students safe, Jasmine follows these rules: 

• Asks students beforehand if they have been sick, visited a hospital recently, etc.
• Sanitizes the entire workshop before class: tools, furniture, doorknobs, etc.
• Sets up the space so that tools and materials are 2 meters (a little more than 6 feet) apart, and keeps students 2 meters apart at all times.
• Limits the number of participants to 3.
• Has students sanitize hands before entering the classroom.
• Has students wear masks during the entire class.

Jasmine has had great success with following these rules, and we all agreed that in-person workshops create a connection that can’t be wholly replicated online. “Just looking at my face, it’s a game changer,” Jasmine told us. 

We chatted in-depth about Jasmine’s workshops, even outside the scope of Covid-19. Listen to our latest episode, which drops on Thursday, July 9, 2020, to hear more, like how she evaluates students’ experiences, teaching in a different language, how masterclass workshops in Asia differ from workshops in North America, using ideas from other crafts and cultures to improve paper flower making, and much more.