Teaching continues this summer in Southern California. My six-week, general adult education Writing Boot Camp runs in night school. A new four-part course addresses today’s social media demands, such as building and safeguarding one’s reputation and putting pictures into a proper context, and using social media to advance one’s self-interest.
The new series, Maximizing Social Media, and Writing Boot Camp, go from June to July in LA’s San Fernando Valley at the Henry Mingay adult education campus near Bob Hope Airport in Burbank (register online for Writing Boot Camp here and Maximizing Social Media here).
Maximizing Social Media is an intensive, all-new short course covering the essential principles of media management, including creating and cultivating your social network for maximum and premium value. Classes feature demonstrations, tutorials and screenshots of various social media apps and sites.
Writing Boot Camp is an immersive study of the writing process in a certain progression of six steps. Students read what they write aloud in a collaborative, structured and purposeful classroom setting and each student’s writing is evaluated by yours truly with detailed notes and feedback. Each student who finishes either course is invited to join my new, closed adult education alumni groups on Facebook for networking and information about creative opportunities and resources and creative events such as the LA Times Festival of Books and TCM Classic Film Festival.
Additionally, and for the first time, I’m planning to teach seniors at Burbank’s Joslyn Adult Center. The city’s parks and recreation department asked me to build a media program on Mastering Social Media to help active older adults engage family, work and life. The three-part program includes: “Introducing Social Media” on June 7; “Understanding Social Media” on June 21 and “Activating Social Media” on June 28.
Joslyn Adult Center in Burbank, California
The first 90-minute workshop provides seniors—a segment of the population which I think is widely misunderstood and underestimated—with an orientation in social media essentials. The second session examines functionality on such apps and sites as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. The third and final workshop offers an opportunity for demonstration and personal instruction on social media accounts. Each session takes place at Joslyn Adult Center. To register, call (818) 238-5353. The Joslyn Adult Center, located in Burbank’s George Izay Park, is named for businessman Marcellus Joslyn, whose foundation funded its construction and capital projects.
Teaching adults, especially older adults—though young adults frequently enroll, too—is immensely rewarding. Writing is inherently introspective and solitary. The classroom is a wonderful place to instill, renew and affirm one’s lifelong contract to learn. Teaching what I know to some of LA‘s most engaged, productive and knowledgeable minds—mostly middle class working adults—is constantly enriching. Besides managing social media and various screenwriting, journalism and enterprise projects, I’ve enrolled as a student myself this summer in Turner Classic Movies’ online educational partnership with Ball State to study Alfred Hitchcock films. I also plan to attend Pittsburgh’s first Objectivist Conference.