A call to service... Teachers that is

Education
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@baileyfry
@SewingStuff
@uglyknees

So last night, in the honorarium auditor hangout we were discussing some of the problems with classes at the space. The most fundamental is a lack of consistent ‘quality’ for lack of a better term. Which shouldn’t be surprising since other then the three folks listed above, none of our members are actually trained teachers. Wouldn’t it be great if we had some form of basic training at DMS to help the amateurs among us learn how to organize and present material in the best possible way for people to learn?

We also have a few folks that are naturally good at it like @John_Marlow who may be able to help as well. In my opinion, when someone finds a class at DMS that wasn’t very good (in their opinion), it is usually because the folks teaching may not know how to teach. That is a skill, and one we don’t value as much as we should.

So what do you’ll think? Are you willing to work together and create a prospective class curriculum that reveals how you get information into those little plague carriers heads?

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While I’m not a trained teacher, I’ve been creating and delivering product and training presentations for years to a global audience at work and have helped many others with creating training materials including slides and hands-on lab exercises.

I’m happy to help and have posted slide templates to the wiki that have a layout specifically created to help folks who have never created training materials include some of the key things needed.

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Thanks Raymond, this can and should be a collective activity.

To that end I have created an initial draft of a wiki page to house the potential curriculum for this class, provide resources and information to people who have never taught a class and would like to know how to prepare for that.

https://dallasmakerspace.org/wiki/Learn_to_teach

Please lets ALL create and fill out this page.

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I have to say I don’t know much about teaching. I try to put myself in the shoes of those that I am training. For instance on the PlasmaCam class, I had several people look over the material before the class was taught. I still welcome constructive criticism on what I can do to make things better. Also I think that we should have the training materials be the same so the training will be as close as the same as possible. There has been some improvements suggested & we are trying to make those improvements.

I would not mind at all to sit in a training session to help improve my training/teaching skills.

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You know, I am not a teacher. But I have given more than my share of presentations as an engineer in the industry, Ive lectured a few times at major Texas University. But the thing that taught met the most about teaching was closer to my humble beginnings back before I even knew I might be smart and/or determined enough to become an electrical engineer.

You see, the reason I was able to successfully complete Texas A&M’s rigorous, calculus and differential equation intensified engineering curriculum is not because I am smarter than anyone. Nope, instead its just the way that life worked out for me. I stumbled into situations that forced me to develop the skills that ultimately carried me to earning my BSEE with honors in 1999, and then luckily on to work for a company I can only describe as superlative.

I needed money when I was in Nacogdoches, TX, taking remedial math courses (college algebra for starters, how embarrassing) since I was a high school drop out. Fortunately for me, SFA (Students For Alcohol) I mean (Stephen F. Austin) had set their bar really, really low bar for admission. In fact, I would say that there is no bar other than you would need to somehow have some tuition dollars, and they would even help you get that. Luckily for me, I had aptitude for math, and squeaked out an A in collega algebra. Now upward and onward to analytic geometry.

I got fired from my KFC job as evidently I was not “Kentucky Fried Material”. This comment would have been funny if I didn’t need the money. But I did, and if you can’t even make the KFC cut, what options are there? I had seen some literature somewhere on campus about this thing in the Steen Library called AARC. It was a student based tutoring system where tutors were paid well to teach other students individually about the subjects that they are good at. The ad mentioned that math tutors were in particularly high demand. And guess what, I had an A in college algebra! (we will just overlook that the only students who need this course are the ones who did not finish high school algebra, like me)

I wrote a resume that I feel certain looking back screamed loser and took it in with a transcript showing my A in college algebra into that library and spoke to a gentleman names Mr. Gaut. Well, Mr. Gaut needed more math tutors, and a tutor that can teach algebra only is technically a math tutor. So he put me on. And the pay was great for state job. This state job payed double the min wage that KFC paid.

But thats not where I profited from this job. I profited from this job tremendously and I worked it for 2.5 years. I profited from this job because I wound up helping folks understand how to solve their math problems. And in order for me to help them, I had to understand the problem and solution fully. At first, I am quite certain I was the worst tutor in there. If a math student asked me a question, 30 minutes later I could answer them once I had read their chapter, worked a few examples, then the problem, then I could help. The person who asked the initial question would get frustrated and leave. But a funny thing happened after that… another student came in with that same question. Then another, and another. All of those students thought I was the smartest math tutor ever.

Fast forward 2.5 years, and I had solved pretty much every math problem in every text used at SFA, and had become the go-to guy on campus for anyone with a challenging calculus or physics question. The job served as my training grounds for mathematics and physics, and I got quite good at it because I was the one who had solved more problems than any ohter student on campus at SFA. The math skills I developed at AARC at SFA are the reason I was able to get accepted at Texas A&M, transfer, graduate with honors, and work for the great companies that I did.

About teaching:

The AARC had one most important premise: The pencil goes in the client’s (student’s) hand. If the tutor is solving the problem, the client is not, and so the client is not learning. Simple, huh? I learned that to help the student, I had to understand what time it was first, then I could be of assistance. If a student asked me something I did not know, I would tell them to schedule a time with me, then I would look it up, figure it out and was prepared when I met with them. When we did meet, I was quick to get a piece of paper in front of them, and a pencil in their hand. I would read them the problem, ask them to write it down so they could stare at the question stated mathematically, then if they could not progress, I would ask them questions to prompt them in the correct direction toward solving the problem. They would solve it, not me. Sometimes I would stop and show them how to solve a similar problem, but only AFTER they had struggled with theirs for a minute, hence they were attentive to what I was doing.

And there it is folks, from my humble beginnings, the difference between effective teaching and droning on while everyone in the room’s eyes glaze over: keeping your students engaged/busy. No one learns anything from watching someone work. You teach by example, and learn by doing. So why not put your class to work doing what they wanted to learn how to do???

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What the hell…?

<!sljfvbceibv>

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First of all, thank you for the (indirect) reminder. The first couple times I taught the embroidery class, at the end I asked the participants how the class could be improved. I received specific constructive suggestions that helped improve future iterations of the class. I have forgotten to do that lately and you have reminded me how important that is.

Second, I’d like to point out that there are likely several possible contributing factors, and they have different solutions. In no particular order …

  • The instructor may be ill-prepared or not know the material. These situations are, AFAIK, uncommon.

  • The instructor may not be able to “teach” it in a manner that gets it across. A list of “best practices”, teaching help, and specific feedback from the participants could all help.

  • The participants may not have expectations that match what the instructor intended to teach. Writing a precise synopsis on the calendar is crucial to managing the expectations of the students. I have proposed to Nicole @uglyknees a voluntary template/checklist for CA instructors to use to remove some of the ambiguity in that. (EDIT: link added).

  • The incoming skill level of the participants may be so varied that the material isn’t suitable for all (like how could it be in that situation??) The calendar class synopsis should manage expectations for incoming skill levels.

  • Or the expectations might be exactly what the instructor intended to teach but it might not be what the student wanted. Our “compliance” classes are a good example of this - woodshop basics, MultiCam. The student understands that they are going to learn the basic operation of the machine controls, but they really want (more) hands on, or a basic woodworking class for instance instead.

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Is teaching a class about teaching a class recursive? :smiley_cat:

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Best kind of class! In my opinion creating a class outline curriculum is a lot like writing software. You keep breaking the task into smaller more manageable steps, until you have a sequence of easily swallowed steps.

Folks, feel free to edit the above wiki page with your ideas, etc… Lets start with brainstorming on the page, then we can worry about cleaning it up and organizing.

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Great run down of the rational causes of class complaints @John_Marlow.

But, I’ll question the premise of this thread:

Consistency seems like the wrong measure. Shouldn’t we be striving for a minimum quality, rather than a consistent one? Consistent suggests we take our best classes and bring them down in quality while also bringing our worst classes up in quality.

I don’t mind having amazing classes that beat the expectations of the members of the class, but I also don’t expect all subjects to do that. If we have members complaining that their attendance to a free class was not valuable enough for the space to pay the teacher, then we should bring that up with the teacher. I really only know of 1 or 2 times this has been a real issue among the now hundreds of classes we have offered over the years. But, I don’t have perfect information of this and the discussions tend to hide the identity of teachers that may be an issue. So over and under reporting could both rear their head on this.

Would it be better to simplify honorarium and deal with individuals rather than force all to comply and deal with the loss of teachers?

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Nick, please take your concern about the honorarium to a new thread. The purpose of this thread is to work on a curriculum to teach the teachers.

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@Nick, I believe by wanting “consistent” classes, it means to make sure that the trainers for any particular subject are all teaching the same material - incorporating feedback to improve the material when possible. It’s an issue that several of us have mentioned several times - when members come back and say, “Well, so and so taught the class and said this; but, someone else said that” . I have tried to encourage the direction of having teaching material created for Laser and 3D Fab in the past for these very reasons.

Also, like @wandrson suggested, please keep honorarium discussion where it belongs. The focus of this thread is all about helping members who volunteer to teach at the 'Space to provide consistent and quality lessons. Your post was flagged for being “Off Topic” because of trying to steer the conversation towards honorarium - which does not belong in this thread.

Thanks!

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Ok,

So we are not talking about all classes then, we are more specifically talking about required training? Am I correct in this assumption? @wandrson

The Original Post seemed to suggest all classes as it didn’t specify a curtain type of class. My response was targeted at a larger variety of classes wondering if we were targeting the right goal with consistency rather than minimum acceptable standards. Or if we even have a large enough problem to need anything?

Wasn’t trying to take the discussion off topic, just didn’t realize we were being so specific when it hadn’t been specified.

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Nick, I have been clear, the topic of this thread is the creation of a curriculum material for teaching teachers. If you want to have another discussion about rules/honorariums etc, please start another thread…

After all your the one who routinely insists the threads stay on topic.

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I think this would be helpful for people that will be teaching recurring classes especially. I believe standardization for routinely trained items so there is consistency between instructors, i.e. Metal Lathe, Bridgeport, Plasma cutter all have a standard curriculum so it doesn’t become “but my instructor said this.”

If a basic how to give a good class is developed that is simple and informative I believe that would be helpful. But wouldn’t want to make it mandatory unless there problems reported. For the most part almost all the classes I’ve attended the instructor do at least an adequate job in conveying knowledge or skill. Making a additional mandatory prerequisite hurdles a don’t favor but do strongly support them as corrective action measures if there are complaints (and at what level of complaints is another discussion).

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@John_Marlow actually proposed a very nice option for teachers to help them write out plans for upcoming classes.

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But, but, we want the SECRETS. You’ll must know SOMETHING to get those brain dead adolescents to actually learn something!

BTW, more then plans, I am think the skills to teach. Which is why I talked about public speaking and such on the wiki page linked above.

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Adult learning is an interesting beast that I don’t believe I’ve mastered at all - our members who have done corporate training are more in tune with the timing/attention spans of adults. I’m willing to help however I can.
That being said I haven’t taken a bad class here at DMS. I’ve taken long classes but all of them have been valuable.

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Calling our members adults is generous of you :slight_smile:

This isn’t about bad classes, but rather learning to be better at teaching. I have a few very good teachers in my life, a large number of adequate teachers, and a few very bad ones.

Number 4. of our mission statement is about sharing and teaching each other. In my opion everyone can learn to be better communicating and sharing what they have learned with others.

That is what I am talking about here. Ideally, I was thinking of classes, but simply organizing material to give people ideas, and examples of how they could better organize their material for classes would be of great benefit to our members. It isn’t simply about dealing with ‘bad classes’. All of our classes can be better. That is what this is about.

An NO, I am not talking about mandatory anything… Nick

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Nothing should be mandatory. We can’t make people feel like the cannot teach or share their knowledge. What should be done is an optional process to help people who want to learn how to effectively teach or better their teaching skills.

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