Springy Paper

Paper springs! If you have never made them, I highly recommend learning this mostly useless but very fun craft skill in the near future.

Read on to find out which unsuspecting individuals on campus learned how to make these fun springs today!



First of all, I really don't know what made me think of this when I was brainstorming types of folk knowledge that I could teach to someone else. Other things I thought of were making rice pudding (my favorite dessert), driving a standard transmission car, and whistling with grass (click here if you have no idea what this is).

I ruled out all these other ideas because I wanted to take on the challenge of teaching a complete stranger. I love teaching - as the oldest of six children, it kind of comes naturally to me - so I wanted to stretch beyond the kind of everyday experience with it that I'm used to. (That way I could actually progress in our learning outcomes areas of "communicating knowledge" and "sharing knowledge" rather than just doing something I already do.)

That said, I knew that if I was going to convince someone I didn't know to learn something from me, though, that something would have to pretty simple and very quick!

Thus the paper spring!

My next challenge was finding willing learners. I turned to the service fair that happened on campus today - I was sure to find nice people there!

I walked up to a booth where two friendly-looking students were advertising ACCESS, an organization that matches at-risk children with a pair of students who befriend and mentor them. Nathaniel and Lindsey were more than happy to learn how to make a paper spring in return for the chance to explain ACCESS to me! (And as an aside, their program is awesome - you can learn more about it here).


They were such good sports, and their paper springs turned out great! Through the process of teaching, I noticed a couple of things. First, it didn't take much explanation. I made a spring, and they watched and made theirs along with me. I think this shows how we absorb a lot of the folk knowledge we have and explains why we don't always realize or recognize when and how we learn it. We just see and do!

Also, as we were making our springs, Lindsey said, "Oh, I've done this before! I just didn't know they were called paper springs!" For a moment, this kind of burst my bubble, since all of a sudden I was no longer teaching her anything. But I decided this made another great point about folk knowledge in general: a lot of times, we don't have a name for everything we know. We do know and we do things, but it would never occur to us to categorize many types of knowing and doing as any kind of skill.

I purposely did not attempt to explain here the process of making a paper spring. It's much better taught in person! However, if you're dying to know how to do it, there's a pretty good step-by-step for paper spring-making on the wikiHow. Check it out!