Teaching Jewelry Classes - Do You Need to Be Certified?

I am particularly interested in your article about teaching jewelry classes in the months when sales are down. Do you have to be "certified" to do this, or does taking classes and perfecting your skills qualify you to pass on the knowledge?

Your sites are very helpful and informative!

Answer:

Qualifications for Teaching Jewelry Making Classes and Workshops

© by Rena Klingenberg; all rights reserved

For most jewelry workshop situations, no certification of any type is needed. I think the only time you would need to have certification might be if you were going to teach in a venue such as the Bead and Button national conference (I'm not positive about that - you'd need to check with them), or in community college or other formal school setting.

Otherwise, what really matters are your jewelry making skills, plus your ability to break each project down into small steps and communicate what the students need to do next.

Most craft stores and bead stores are happy to have jewelry artists come in and teach classes or workshops. Some of them may require you to teach a project that uses some of their materials that the students would have to buy in the shop.

Sometimes the shop might ask you to set the fee for the class, and then will take a percentage of each student's fee. Or sometimes they simply have a standard fee that they charge per student and you'll get a percentage of it. So you definitely want to check with them first to see what the parameters are before planning a class or workshop you want to teach.

And of course in any jewelry teaching you do on your own - for example in your own home/studio, at jewelry making parties, children's birthday parties, etc. - no one's going to even think about certification. They just want to have fun learning how to make a neat piece of jewelry. And there's a huge demand for this.

I also think that if you have ever been a student in a jewelry making class or workshop, that's good experience for teaching on your own. You probably learned good teaching techniques, as well as things that really didn't work so well, when you were in classes taught by other people!

If you like people, I think you'll enjoy this as a fun way to bring in extra money when sales are down.

For more information:

Teaching Jewelry Making Workshops.

Good luck, and have fun!