A couple of days ago, I got an e-mail from Bruce, N7RR. It covered a lot of ground, including the lack of copyediting in our question pools and getting youngsters involved in amateur radio.
Personally, I’m actually getting less interested in working with younger kids, although I do fully support those who are working with them. The big reason for this is that I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m just not very good at working with kids. I’ve tried twice to set up an amateur radio club at local middle schools, but was spectacularly unsuccessful both times.
Part of the reason I was unsuccessful is that I wasn’t able to get much support from the schools or other hams. For example, last school year, our local school district set up a middle school STEM program. I sent the powers that be an e-mail asking if the school might be interested in making an amateur radio club part of the program. Not only did I not get a positive response, when I asked the members of our ham radio club if any of them would be willing to help me with this school club, I didn’t get a single volunteer. I can’t do things like this by myself.
Having said that, I have had teenagers and college students (I live in Ann Arbor, MI, home of the University of Michigan) in my classes, and many now have ham licenses. I do Elmer these young people as much as I can (or as much as they want), and many are now active amateur radio operators.
These young people are “makers” and hackers, and I think focusing on this group of people is going to be more successful than just trying to attract random kids from a middle school population. To this end, I’m going to be teaching some electronics–not amateur radio–classes at the local library. They just opened up a hacker space there, and I think this should be a lot of fun. I just taught a class on how to use a digital multimeter, and two of the five who attended, already had an amateur radio connection. I think that with a little push, I could turn those two into hams.
Finally on this topic, Bob, K0NR, a fellow blogger and ham radio instructor, has an interesting viewpoint. About half of his students are between 30 and 54, and he says, “This age range is more equipped and ready to be ham radio operators [than younger kids] and are still young enough to be around for a while.” The situation he describes in his blog post is pretty much what I’ve experienced in my classes, although I think that my demographic skews a bit younger than Bob’s, but not by much. I certainly think this idea is something worth pursuing.
We really need more data. I think I’ll e-mail the ARRL and see if I can get them interested in setting up some kind of study.
Kirk Seifert says
Our club sponsors 5 classes, 3 tech & 2 gen yearly and my experience is very close to Dan and Bob’s regarding age groups. We have had good discussions about the GOTA thread that came up a couple weeks ago and we have worked the plan into our club meetings for March and April, 2016. Our object is to retain active hams, particularly those that got licensed through our classes, who need further guidance and help. The #’s of inactive hams continues to grow and those same folks are likely not going to be encouraging others to get interested in the hobby. We feel that that discussion regarding the GOTA subject would be very helpful, in our area, in the long run.
John Doucet says
I became a ham in 2008 at 35, and I thought I was getting in late. Based on your experience, I guess I was right on the money. I too have tried to get kids interested, but find it hard to compete with things like video games that, on the surface at least appear more glamorous.
On a different note, I used your “No Nonesense” guide along with the ARRL study guide to pass my General exam last week. Your book made it much easier than using the ARRl book alone. I was so impressed that I picked up the Extra class guide after I got home from taking the General exam.
73’s
John
KI6SST
Dan KB6NU says
Thanks for sharing your experience and your kind words about my study guide, John. Good luck on the test!
Dave, N8SBE says
The interest of adults in helping kids do things in school is directly related to whether they have kids of the same/similar age in the same schools. Everyone goes through a phase, more or less, when they volunteer (if they ever do) to help out in some way at their kid’s school. But, once their youngest child moves on, so do they.
The key to getting any long-term program running in any given school is to get the school science or shop teacher involved. Get them to get their ham license, and hopefully their enthusiasm will get them interested in putting a ham station in their classroom.
My high school electric shop teacher (a ham) was the key to getting and keeping a ham club going there. He cleaned out a small tool room that opened onto the shop with a dutch door, and placed a desk and chairs in there, and somehow came up with the funding to put a Drake 2C and 2NT in there (state of the art for us Novices). Later, a NCX3 somehow made its appearance, for those that had moved on to General, avoiding the “Technician Trap” of those days. We had a HyGain 14AVQ vertical on a 50 ft. pushup mast on the roof of the industrial arts building, which put the top at an impressive 75 ft. That was the first time I encountered the power of snow static. :-)
The club call was WB4LFU — “Lightly Fumigated Underwear” :-)
Michael says
Hi,
I was exposed to ham radio as a teen in the mid to late 1980’s. Unfortunately life got in the way. At 43 years of age I decided to get my ticket. My 12 year old daughter was briefly interested in learning and getting her ticket as well. Unfortunately that was a brief interest. My 15 year old daughter goes out on all the events our ECOM group provides comms for safety. She doesn’t have her ticket. The great thing is she gets air time under my supervision and I do hope she jumps on board fully by doing the study and exam.
Ronny Risinger says
As a high school teacher (19 years) and sponsor of our ham radio club (11 years), I can attest to the difficulty in getting and/or keeping a ham club going in a school. If you don’t have an active teacher to act as cheerleader, along with a supportive administration, you can bet it will fail quickly. With that being said, you are on the right track with the “Maker” approach. My ham kids love doing hands on stuff. And, it keeps them interested long enough to learn (or, at least, appreciate) the radio art.
And, School Club Roundup is a great opportunity to “test run” radio at a school. A portable station set up that week will probably get a lot of interest.
Each of us has our gifts, so I applaud you for realizing that working with kids was not your thing. While I can keep kids entertained, I lack a lot of the technical expertise. It all works out in the end. I would add that this blog and your promotion of Amateur Radio is a form of outreach, too. Keep up the good work.
73,
Ronny, KC5EES
Trustee, K5LBJ, LASA High School Amateur Radio Club
Austin, Texas