We strongly recommend running a teacher training event for your teachers and teaching assistants prior to the workshop. This teacher training session should generally be scheduled a few days prior to your workshop - this keeps it fresh in everyone's mind.
Teacher training generally covers two areas:
- Being a good teacher and being sensitive to the students' needs
- Agreeing on the style of how the workshop will run
We currently rely on the RailsBridge teacher training slide deck.
We'd love a volunteer to adapt this into something specific to ClojureBridge - hint, hint!
We want the install fest and the workshop to be a fun, friendly, welcoming environment for learning! Encourage questions, be supportive - don't criticize, don't take over their computer, don't use jargon. Keep an eye our for students who are struggling and help them - encourage them.
If you haven't already, decide who is going to lead the class(es) through the slides - it can be tiring to be the presenter all day so tag-teaming the presentation part might be a good idea. Decide who is going to keep an eye on the time to help track the pace of the workshop, the exercises, and the breaks. It's a good idea to designate someone as the notetaker for the day, writing down things that would be good to cover in the teacher / TA retrospective after the workshop is complete.
Consider how or if you'll handle breaking the group into separate classes based on ability and running multiple classes through the material - at a different pace, with different exercises.
Make sure everyone has run through the workshop slides and the narrative of the curriculum and feels comfortable with the flow. Since not all of your teaching assistants will necessarily have Clojure skills, figure out who your "go to" people are so everyone knows how to get "unstuck" when the students ask questions where you don't know the answer.
Above all, this is your collective chance to ask questions about the install fest and the workshop process so that you're all on the same page, to help the workshop run smoothly.