All my life, ceramics had been a dark mystery.

I imagined the clay flying in all directions the second the potter's wheel started spinning, but despite my fears of assured failure, I decided to throw myself into it.

Azzah: All right, guys.

Students: Hola!

John: Hi, everybody!

Azzah: Hello.

We have a new student with us.

This is John, everyone.

Today, we are going to be doing a kind of combined project.

I'm gonna do a wheel demo, and then you guys will just kind of circle around, like, right here.

You guys can pull up a chair.

When getting clay, I like to get about a size of my fist to start with.

I could also do this, right, and now I have kind of a nice little cone shape to start.

So I'm gonna take my cone, and I'm just gonna smack it on like that.

Then I can take my finger with some water, and this is gonna seal the clay to the wheel.

Make sure that it's really not going anywhere.

You can see that?

It's kind of moving me around, but if I just tuck and push, then the clay starts to go up, and this is what we call coning the clay up.

And this isn't completely centered.

That's why it's got a bit of a wobble.

John: How hard is this gonna be for me, you think?

Student: Very difficult.

John: I mean, I've literally never done this before.

Girl: My first time, I remember I, like, came in here, and I was nervous because I really didn't know what I was doing, and I was moving a little bit too fast.

Like, my wheel was moving slower than my hands were, so my clay kept, like, breaking off, and, like, eventually--I was trying to make a bowl and it just all, like, collapsed, and then Loren helped me make, like, a little tiny ring dish that I still have.

Azzah: Out of the, like, leftover ring?

Girl: Yeah.

Out of, like, the leftover ring.

Boy: Whoa!

Girl: It's wearing a skirt.

Boy: Yeah.

Azzah: I'm gonna turn it into one of these.

John: That's fantastic.

Girl: It's like a cupcake holder.

Azzah: Let's see if I could do something with this.

John: When you guys first did it, did-- Azzah: Oh!

There we go.

So that part was so thin right there-- John: Oh, I missed that.

Azzah: It just wanted to snap right off.

John: Do it again.

Boy: Do it again.

John: Put it put it back on and then let it flop off again.

Azzah: I can't.

I can't.

And there we go.

That's gonna be what I'm working with today.

This is my masterpiece.

John: Do you feel that teaching itself is a creative act?

Azzah: Yeah, definitely, and I learn more things about myself, too, through teaching.

So you're gonna wrap this left hand... John: Yeah.

Azzah: over.

John: As I suspected, this was proving to be a real challenge, and while I was not about to give up, I did need more guidance, so Azzah took my hands in hers and helped me just as she had helped my classmates.

Azzah: This thumb is gonna get nice and steady before you actually start pressing down.

I'm just gonna get it steady, find the middle, and then you can wrap these fingers around these fingers, and you're gonna kind of bring your thumb up to go straight down.

There you go.

John: And it's just, like, digging-- Azzah: Yeah.

John: digging and-- Azzah: Try to keep in the center and try to just keep your thumb as straight as possible.

John: This is great!

Azzah: Hey!

Not too bad.

All right.

Let's slow it down right there.

John: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Azzah: Ha ha ha!

So when you get to the top there... John: Yeah.

Azzah: try to come off of the pot a little bit instead of following through.

John: Nothing has--nothing has flown off the road yet.

Boy: Which is good.

Better than I can do.

John: Oh, my God.

Boy: You did it!

John: How about that, Walter?

Oh, I was so nervous.

Walter: Yeah.

What were you nervous about?

John: I don't know.

I always imagined that the first 10 times I did this it would all fly up in the air.

Walter: Well, good thing's Azzah's a great teacher.

John: I think I had a very good teacher.

The nice thing about the way Azzah teaches is you don't really feel like you're doing anything wrong, you know, and you can experiment with things and make use of mistakes and everything, and that's great.

You did it in no time.

It's all about the centering of it.

I had wonderful art classes when I was in high school as a teenager, and I think one week we messed around with clay, and I did something in the shape of a giraffe, a little pitcher, which was perfectly hideous, but my mother made sure it was on the mantelpiece of every home they ever had, and they lived in about 10 different homes, and do you remember the first time you did any ceramics at all?

Azzah: Yes.

I was in high school.

I made the world's worst cup.

Um, it was, like, so lumpy.

I feel like it's really easy to be disappointed in yourself with making clay, but I try to tell the students to just, like, be happy that they made anything at all.

John: But I loved the way you dealt with the mistakes here because it is much more valuable to fail than to succeed.

Azzah: Yeah.

John: You learn far more from failure.

Azzah: Yeah.

John: And success sort of leads you in one direction, whereas failure keeps you searching in all directions.

Azzah: Exactly.

I feel like failure, too, is a way to find out, like, what your own personal success means in the first place, right?

Because success isn't universal necessarily.

John: And ceramics is such an interesting version of that because you don't quite know what the result is going to be until it comes out of the kiln.

Azzah: Mm-hmm.

Girl: I want to finish my octopus.

John: Oh, look at that octopus!

That's great.

Girl: No.

It only has 7 legs.

John: Ha ha ha!

Well, that's a septopus.

Girl: Yeah.

John: You're making a difference in these kids' lives.

Azzah: Yeah, I really admire that about this class.

They're always encouraging each other, and I feel like it gives them a lot of confidence.

How do you guys think John did for his first time?

Boy: I think he did really good.

Walter: Really well.

John: I've had such a good time doing this with you.

I let the clay spin and spin and spin in my hands, and before I knew it, a small pot had emerged, not big, not sensational, but for me, a masterpiece.