What do you need to do to be a workshop leader?
In October you will get an e-mail asking you to run a workshop.
Say yes.
Optional: find a co-leader. You can e-mail allgrads or ask people that
you think might be interested. It is most effective to do both.
In November decide on a topic. You have two options:
1) You can decide to re-run an old session. This is the easiest option,
especially if you or someone working with you has done the old session
before. It's also possible to modify/update an old session. Here
are some outlines of past sessions.
2) You can create a new session. This takes some time but can be very
fun. For this, it's best to have more than one person working on it.
It's also good to have at least one experienced person who is familiar
with the format of the workshops working on it. This will probably
take an additional 20 hours, but when spread out among many people, it
isn't so bad.
There is also a meeting for new workshop leaders where you will find
people who can tell you about their experiences. Sometimes, there is
pizza involved.
At the very beginning of December you will need to e-mail a
paragraph describing your workshop to the campus-wide EYH coordinator.
Here are some examples from previous sessions. They need this for a
pamphlet which they will distribute to the junior highschool students.
This is how the girls attending the workshops decide which ones they
would like to attend.
Now you can take a break for a while. Relax, go sled riding, catch up on
your thesis, or sleep. (But not all at once.)
In late January/early February there will be two meetings; one
brief (half hour) one for workshop leaders, and one for school visits.
You and your helpers do not need to go to the school visit one, but you
should see if anyone would like to do so. Basically, they send people to
area schools to advertise EYH to the students. The meeting for the
leaders will go over how EYH works and tips on how to run/plan a workshop.
It's a useful way to meet with other workshop leaders to share ideas.
In February you will need to give the campus-wide coordinator some
details.
Where will you hold your workshop? You can reserve a room
in the main office; usually one of the second floor rooms with flat
desks is good.
How many girls should attend? It's nice to have a 1 of us to 2
of them ratio, especially if they will be working in pairs.
Typically, 12 is a good number. You will also have adults at your
session. If you have some activities for them to do, they will be
happy. If you have a person or two free to talk to them about what
being a mathematician is like, they'll be happy. If you have someone
talk to them about the school math curricula, they'll be happy. All of
this can be done informally, but it is important to keep the adults
from doing the girls activities for them.
How many volunteers will you have? They need this information
to plan how many lunches and t-shirts to get for the volunteers. In
order to answer this, I usually e-mail allgrads, ask some individual
grad student who are interested in teaching, and ask any math
education people that I know. You can also ask the postdocs. Then, I
answer with a range, usually 5-7 people.
Are there any time constraints? You can hold your workshop 1,
2, or 3 times during the day. Typically, we hold it all three times,
although sometimes we have fewer volunteers for one of the times. The
times that they run are 9:50-11:00, 11:25-12:35, and 2:10-3:20.
In April, things get a little busier. You will need to arrange
for supplies (you can ask Joy to get food items from Wegmans). If you
include food, it is a good idea to have some kind of
diabetic/vegan/kosher/etc option. (Eg, in The Secret of Nim we used M
'n M's as the main option with some pretzel sticks as an alternative.)
You should pick up a building key, so that you can unlock the doors
instead of propping them open. You will also need to meet with your
volunteers and run through the workshop together. This will take an
hour or two.
Finally, it is the big day (typically the last Saturday in
April). Although the first workshop is scheduled for 9:50 AM, you
will need to arrive significantly before then (around 9 AM). Before
the workshop starts, you will need to unlock doors, put up signs with
arrows, designate someone to wait at the bus stop to collect the
people who are attending your workshop, and set up any accessories.
You should also work out among the volunteers who will do the various
introductions and explainations throughout the workshop. It's best to
rotate people. Since part of the goal of these workshops is to
provide female role models, you should make sure that at least one
female does an introduction/explaination in each of the sessions.
(It's fine to have other people do them too.)
Then, you hold the workshop. You hold it again. You eat lunch. You
hold it again. If you find during the workshop that things (ie timing)
aren't working out as planned, you can modify it as you go. Since you
have different groups of girls at each of the three sessions, each time
will be different. If you are holding the workshop in Mallott, the third
one (after lunch) will have people arriving early. Be sure to get back to
the room about 15 minutes early, and have a few things to do or books to
look at to fill the time before the last one starts. You can also talk
with the girls and find out what they've seen and learned; some of it is
very interesting.
About an hour or so after the workshops are over, there will be a
volunteer reception with food. This is where you get the T-shirts, but in
order to do so, you need to get evaluations. The evaluations are
important, since they will help the people organizing at the level above
you work out details for next year's EYH. It's also a very good idea to
spend the time reflecting on your workshop immediately after you've
finished it. This can help you decide on ways to improve it in the
future, or maybe even to retire it.