OUR KIDS PROGRAM TODAY
At the start of Covid-19, one of the LICW members Robb, K2MZ, approached the founders of the club for permission to offer a CW Class for kids. During that first year over 300 young people participated in the classes and some are still with us today having obtained their Amateur Radio licenses.
When Robb was no longer able to continue with the classes, Ken K7BXI and Bob W7JNM volunteered to continue to build the program from there. We usually have around 30 active students at any given time with 5 adult instructors and an equal number of student instructors.
Yes, we have parents and grandparents that join us with their kids and learn CW and other aspects of amateur radio! Just like our Buddy Program shows us that we usually learn better with a colleague, many parents and grandparents have discovered they and their kids are more motived to learn in the company of each other.
We currently run 6 scheduled classes per week on Zoom with Beginners on Tuesday, Intermediate on Thursday and Advanced on Sunday. Within these scheduled classes, we use breakout rooms depending on the number of instructors and proficiency level of our students. Our students range from grades K-12 with no experience, nor license and no relative involved in Amateur Radio to Amateur Extra with the full family licensed and on the air.
We teach CW, radio procedures/operations and license preparation if interested. We work hard to get them on the air as quickly as possible. We use teaching methods and programs from the adult classes modified to fit the learning rate of individual kids. Criteria for class attendance is respect for others, a desire to be in the program and to have fun! Some of our kids go from attending every class to pausing for a few months for various scheduling reasons. They and their guardians have busy lives and we understand this and the need for flexibility.
Our classes are a social gathering for students and guardians along with our instructors to learn CW and all about Amateur Radio. Each one of our kids is unique and we are fortunate to have them and potentially add them to the Amateur Radio ranks. Our classes are continuous and a student can join in anytime. We have a healthy mix of age and gender at all levels of proficiency. Our program has to date taught over 500 kids in the USA and overseas and we are very proud of its accomplishments.
If you have an interested child for this program, please email us at: info@longislandcwclub.org
