A Bunch of Simple Steps for Proposing a Course
Through The Greater Boston Free School
and Then Seeing it Through
Can I teach a class?
Yes! What do you want to teach?
To "become a teacher" with the GBFS, you need only draft a course proposal and post it to the website with all the helpful information and links for students to enroll in it. You will also need to come to the soonest event and propose your class. Most importantly, once you start talking to people about your course, or emailing, or “facebook messaging” your friends and contacts, or once you create a Meetup, you have become a teacher for GBFS. It might also be helpful to contact one of the collective members and run your class by them, for help with troubleshooting, etc, but there is no official approval process.
Drafting your course proposal:
Once you have a description of the course ready, you'll then need to decide on time and place, fees, cost mitigation, books, etc. Many of us have chosen to do this in collaboration with students at the beginning of term Course Planning Hoedowns. Others do so via email. Still others make all those decisions and hope that students sign on.
Info to Include in Your Course Description:
Either you can propose a specific time or a few times on your description because they’re the only that work for you, or you can give a few general windows of course meeting opportunity, or you can leave it open until you talk to all of your students, and then decide something together. Another online tool is doodle.com.
Posting your course to the GBFS Website:
How? First, on the page of the term during which you want to teach your course, create a link to the course page by putting its title in triple square brackets. It is best to keep your course title as short as you can. Long titles often do not fit well in browsers. Also colons should not be used in the title, since this understood differently by the wikisite and your full title will not appear. Use periods or commas in place of a colon in your title. If you have a long title, put just the most significant few words in brackets and the rest outside them.
After saving the page with your added link, click on the link and create a new page. Add your course description and details on that page, in the editing box.
Here is a suggested format for the course page:
{Magnetic course description—something that will bring students to it. Perhaps include a general outline of topics, activities, or methods.}
Schedule: {day(s) of the week}, {time}
Location: {name of site and link}, {Room at site}
Fees: {$$$ per meeting or per term}
Teacher: {link to your autobio page}
{link to enrollment page}
{link to more detailed schedule, perhaps updated weekly, for drop-in students}
{Texts - here in some of my courses I have identified free online books or other perhaps unknown sources of the relevant books}
For examples, go to any course page, and look at the code in the edit box. You can always pirate someone's course page entirely from the editing box and change the content while leaving the formatting. That's one of the wonders of the wiki.
Teacher Orientation:If you would like to sit down with a collective member, veteran GBFS teacher, either by yourself or with other potential teachers, we would be happy to meet with you in person, and talk about all the aspects of your class.
You, the teacherOnce you have the course description posted you should also go to the autobiographies page and post first a link to your name, and on your autobio page, a teaching-and-learning description of yourself. This tells potential students what areas you work in, are interested in, and would assist in independent studies in. Also leave some contact info there (if email, replace the @ sign with (at) to prevent mining of the site for email addresses.
Disclaimer
It is imporant for our teachers to be okay with the possibility of having one student in your class. Some of the best learning experiences at GBFS have happened in very small classes, 2-3 people including students and teachers. You need to think about your own standards and expectations for how your class should look and operate. As a teacher at GBFS, you will almost definitely be forced to rethink your conception of what a class looks like.
Please Please Contact Us!
New teachers should be in regular contact with another teacher, or a collective member over email or smoke signals to get suggestions, ask questions. Your goal should be to try to be as annoying as possible.
We invite you to contact us with any questions about how to set it up, troubleshooting, finding space, finding students, what we have done to promote the courses, etc.
Yes! What do you want to teach?
To "become a teacher" with the GBFS, you need only draft a course proposal and post it to the website with all the helpful information and links for students to enroll in it. You will also need to come to the soonest event and propose your class. Most importantly, once you start talking to people about your course, or emailing, or “facebook messaging” your friends and contacts, or once you create a Meetup, you have become a teacher for GBFS. It might also be helpful to contact one of the collective members and run your class by them, for help with troubleshooting, etc, but there is no official approval process.
Drafting your course proposal:
Once you have a description of the course ready, you'll then need to decide on time and place, fees, cost mitigation, books, etc. Many of us have chosen to do this in collaboration with students at the beginning of term Course Planning Hoedowns. Others do so via email. Still others make all those decisions and hope that students sign on.
Info to Include in Your Course Description:
- How will you teach....
- Why your class is interesting...
- What you may encourage or expect your students to do between meetings...
- A breakdown of topics that will be covered and a general schedule of tackling...
- How regularly it will meet, and at what time...
Either you can propose a specific time or a few times on your description because they’re the only that work for you, or you can give a few general windows of course meeting opportunity, or you can leave it open until you talk to all of your students, and then decide something together. Another online tool is doodle.com.
- Material that students could access before/outside of class...
- Cost...
- Space/Location...
Posting your course to the GBFS Website:
How? First, on the page of the term during which you want to teach your course, create a link to the course page by putting its title in triple square brackets. It is best to keep your course title as short as you can. Long titles often do not fit well in browsers. Also colons should not be used in the title, since this understood differently by the wikisite and your full title will not appear. Use periods or commas in place of a colon in your title. If you have a long title, put just the most significant few words in brackets and the rest outside them.
After saving the page with your added link, click on the link and create a new page. Add your course description and details on that page, in the editing box.
Here is a suggested format for the course page:
{Magnetic course description—something that will bring students to it. Perhaps include a general outline of topics, activities, or methods.}
Schedule: {day(s) of the week}, {time}
Location: {name of site and link}, {Room at site}
Fees: {$$$ per meeting or per term}
Teacher: {link to your autobio page}
{link to enrollment page}
{link to more detailed schedule, perhaps updated weekly, for drop-in students}
{Texts - here in some of my courses I have identified free online books or other perhaps unknown sources of the relevant books}
For examples, go to any course page, and look at the code in the edit box. You can always pirate someone's course page entirely from the editing box and change the content while leaving the formatting. That's one of the wonders of the wiki.
Teacher Orientation:If you would like to sit down with a collective member, veteran GBFS teacher, either by yourself or with other potential teachers, we would be happy to meet with you in person, and talk about all the aspects of your class.
You, the teacherOnce you have the course description posted you should also go to the autobiographies page and post first a link to your name, and on your autobio page, a teaching-and-learning description of yourself. This tells potential students what areas you work in, are interested in, and would assist in independent studies in. Also leave some contact info there (if email, replace the @ sign with (at) to prevent mining of the site for email addresses.
Disclaimer
It is imporant for our teachers to be okay with the possibility of having one student in your class. Some of the best learning experiences at GBFS have happened in very small classes, 2-3 people including students and teachers. You need to think about your own standards and expectations for how your class should look and operate. As a teacher at GBFS, you will almost definitely be forced to rethink your conception of what a class looks like.
Please Please Contact Us!
New teachers should be in regular contact with another teacher, or a collective member over email or smoke signals to get suggestions, ask questions. Your goal should be to try to be as annoying as possible.
We invite you to contact us with any questions about how to set it up, troubleshooting, finding space, finding students, what we have done to promote the courses, etc.