Northfield School — Instructors
Visual concept preview of the Education Course template's Instructors page: Introduces the module leads and critique tutors, states plainly how the school teaches, and hands the rest of the page to students. The sections below are a non-interactive composition of open-registry blocks.
Every module is led by somebody who still practises, and every critique has two tutors in the room. Nobody here teaches a module they do not work in.
The school has taught the same six modules since 2012, and the method has not moved either: demonstrate, attempt, critique, write it down. Tutors are hired for how they explain a decision, not for the size of their studio.
There are no grades. Every piece of work leaves a critique with written notes attached, and those notes stay in your folder for the whole term so you can watch the same mistake stop recurring.
A student who can say why the line is too long has learned something. A student who can only say it feels wrong has learned to guess more confidently.
Marianne Oduya · principal, and lead of Modules one and two
Collected at the end of each term, printed unedited, and pinned by the studio door.
Piet spent forty minutes on one word space with me. I have thought about that word space in every job since.
I expected to be taught software and was mildly offended when I was handed a pencil. By week three I understood the pencil.
The self-paced cohort still gets two written critiques a module. Mine came back longer than the brief.
Nobody told me my work was good. Somebody told me exactly which two decisions were making it worse, which was better.
Module five nearly finished me and the book is on my shelf. Both things are true.
Hana made us test type on an actual cracked phone from her bag. It was the most honest QA of my career.
The order of the modules annoyed me until Module three, when it stopped annoying me permanently.
I run my own critique group now, badly, using Northfield’s format. It still works better than what we had.
Twenty-two weeks is a long time to be told you are nearly there. It is also how long it took.
The tutors who wrote the syllabus are the tutors in the room. Read the curriculum, then take a place in the next critique group.