Teacher Track sessions available at AWFS
The College of Woodworking Knowledge at the 2019 AWFS Fair will feature 50 educational seminars on topics related to wood products manufacturing, including seven Teacher Track seminars specifically geared to woodworking educators.
All CWWK seminars are $10 unlimited for verified woodworking educators and students.
The Teacher Track seminars include:
WCA – What’s In It for Me?
Join Patrick Molzahn, a veteran post-secondary educator, who has used the WCA Skill Standards to shape his curriculum and find out how he manages the training and credentialing process. Not a trained WCA Evaluator? Don’t let that stop you from attending. This session will show you how you can improve your training program and access resources to accomplish your goals faster and better.
Classroom Tool Safety: A Participatory Session
John Stearns, lead Instructor at The MiLL, will moderate the session and bring ideas he uses in his shop that have kept his students accident-free in the shop (“knock on wood”). Safety instruction, testing and follow up will be covered, as well as good tips to keep your shop safe all year long.
CAD for the Woodworking Program
Mark Smith, an instructor with over 20 years’ experience teaching CAD/CAM at the secondary and post-secondary levels with wood manufacturing in mind, offers this session. He will help you create a drawing you can take back to the shop to use or that can be imported into a CAM program. You will leave with access to step by step curriculum, tutorial videos, and handouts. Attendee will have the best experience if attending with AutoCAD and VCarve Pro loaded onto his or her laptop and an external mouse. Both programs are free to educators.
Teacher Curriculum and Resources
Most days in class, do you fly by the seat of your pants? Are you figuring out what you want your students to do in class the week before, the night before, or the morning of? Hopefully you aren’t figuring out what to do with your class while they are walking in, but we have all had those days. This session, offered by The MiLL Lead Instructor John Stearns, will introduce you to The MiLL curriculum, Teacher Academy, and give you practical takeaways you can use in your class today. We will also discuss with other teachers what lessons work well and even share some “embarrassing moments” working with students.
Teaching Fun Design/Build
Design/Build is not a linear process where you design first and then you build what you design – it’s a dynamic back and forth process that can be chaotic and challenging. In this challenging chaos however is a lot of fun, which should always be present in a classroom maker environment. In this session, Instructor Matthew Wolpe will talk about specific examples of projects that integrate design teaching and thinking into a hands on class and the importance of fun while doing it.
Marketing Your Program – How to Get Started
In the follow-up to his highly-rated 2017 session “Are You Getting Anyone’s Attention?”, instructor Mark Smith will address why you should market your program; how to market your program; what free tools are available to market your program; how to create a press release for your program; how to create a LinkedIn post that could be viewed by potential supporters, and much more!
How to Get Money for Your Program…And Spend it Wisely!
spend more time fixing/maintaining tools than you do teaching students? How in the world do you fund projects to have lasting impacts on students and make your shop the talk of the town? In this session, The MiLL Lead Instructor John Stearns will talk all sorts of funding, from Private Grants, Perkins money, to Industry donations. Once you get the funding, we will talk about how to spend the money wisely to get the biggest impact.
