In a week I will begin teaching an entry-level class that the local
radio club is offering. I would love any words of wisdom from
experienced instructors of this material. I suspect that it has been at
least a couple of decades since I last taught such a class, and things
have changed a bit in that time grin.

The basic issue I'm wrestling with is walking the tightrope between
teaching the actual questions from the pool and teaching concepts. It's
not fair to the students to ignore the existence of the pool; after all,
one of the goals of the class is to prepare them to take the written
exam. But another goal is to get them ready to actually be an active
member of the ham radio community, and memorizing pool questions doesn't
contribute to that objective. So I'll try to do both -- cover concepts
and review the actual questions.

Another issue is the scheduling of the class. There are proponents of
the weekend method -- cover the material in a day or so. While there
are advantages to that, I favor multiple shorter sessions. I think that
learning is much better in that environment, but in today's hectic
world, getting people to commit to multiple sessions is problematic.
We've decided on six session spread over three weeks. Maybe that was a
fatal error; time will tell.

I wish we still had something like the Novice license. I'd like to be
able to get past the pressure of the written exam and get prospective
hams some real experience so they understand what I'm babbling about in
class. For example, you can lecture about repeaters, but if the
students have actually *used* a repeater, they have a whole different
understanding of what you're saying.

73, Steve KB9X