Andrew,

Aside from good vs bad teaching tricks, you need to look at this from the
potential body of students instead of individual experiences. Here in San
Diego, the San Diego Woodturning Centre offers a "Beginners" weekend class
(about 14 hours of instruction) and a 2-day evening "Beginners" class
offered on two consecutive evenings. They also have a project class on a
weekend (14 hours) and an intermediate class (14 hours). Their experince is
that they have a pretty steady stream of beginners with 1-3 students in the
evening and weekend beginners classes. They offer these about 4 time per
month. The project and intermediate classes are only offered once a month
each and have less attendance.

As an ongoing class offer, you may want to consider that you will have new
students many time over that feed into the local club(s), etc. Higher end
courses are offered less frequently.

Also, I find that the more experienced people seem to get what they want
from the turning club interactions and from "pro demonstrators/classes".
The problem with pro classes is cost. How many people can afford two or
three $300-$400 3-day classes each year? Not many.

my 2 cents
Joe Fleming - San Diego

"AHilton" wrote in message
...
The recent discussion in other threads about woodturning classes and
teaching has gotten me to wondering about everybodies experiences in this.
I'm also asking this because one of my woodturning clubs is partnering
with
a local woodworking store (provides facilities) and the regional technical
community college (provides advertising and administration) to provide
adult education woodturning classes through that college. The college is
mainly a high technology, practical workforce type of college but does all
kinds of other classes as well.

The woodturning club is charged with coming up with a lesson plan, fees
rate, time period, and basically everything related to putting on and
teaching the class. I've never attended a woodturning class before and
don't know how most of them are arranged concerning their lesson
schedules,
etc. We're looking at something like a 4 to 6 week class but everything,
and I mean EVERYTHING, is up to us. We can have as many classes as we
want,
charge what we want (obviously we don't want to price the class out of
existance), and teach what we want. I'm sure we're going to start out
with
a beginners class but may add more classes at different levels down the
road
depending on interest.

If you've been to a class, what did you like? What would you have liked
better? If you've taught such class, do you have any tips regarding
anything?

- Andrew