Student Orientation & Curriculum Guide 
Introduction
About CBJA

The Center for Beadwork & Jewelry Arts was founded in 2000, and began offering classes in 2001.   The CBJA is a program teaching beadwork and jewelry arts, providing elective and progressive track courses for students at all levels of skill.    The CBJA is committed to offering a comprehensive range of bead and jewelry related course topics, from bead stringing and bead weaving to lampwork bead making, fused glass, silversmithing, wire work and wire wrapping, and fiber arts.

The CBJA is a different kind of school.    CBJA offers classes structured in a particular order, rather than just a collection of mini-workshops.   The CBJA uses a skills-based, rather than a project-based, approach to curriculum design.   That is, in designing courses and structuring a curriculum of courses, attention is paid to what set of skills should be taught, and in what order these should be taught.  The emphasis is more about, for example, teaching the control of thread and its tension in a stitch, or learning how to shape and use the structural tension of wire to make jewelry.   While every course uses a project in which to provide a context for applying skills, the outcome we are seeking is the learning of skills, not merely completing a project.

CBJA is decidedly art- and design-oriented. It does not support a craft-orientation to training, where the student merely learns a set of steps to complete a particular project.

We have also tightly focused on the quality of instruction.   We believe that each class must present material in written, visual and oral forms.  All teachers are required to provide written instructions.    Written instructions have been pretested to improve clarity and usability.   Teachers are required to provide physical samples of the projects taught in classes.   

We have tried to structure and interlink courses so that it becomes clearer for the student how best to develop his or her skills.    We have specified prerequisites, and progressive course pathways so that the students in any one class are more similar in their beadwork or jewelry making development abilities and needs.

Welcome to the Center for Beadwork & Jewelry Arts.