I have been teaching almost as long as I have been building boats. I helped create the class program at the Small Boat Shop of the maritime museum in San Francisco in the late 1980s and first started teaching weekend workshops there. I have taught workshops across the United States, as well as in Japan, Australia, and France. My research in Japan has included apprenticeships with nine boatbuilders, a formidable and formative experience. Almost all of my teachers told me there would be no speaking in the workshop. I was expected to learn by observation only. What seems counterproductive to learning, since there is no teaching, is in fact profoundly motivating and engaging. As I like to tell my students: the teacher refuses to teach, but the apprentice is required to learn. This experience led me to create an academic course on apprentice pedagogy in which my students build either Japanese boats or teahouses, working mostly in silence.

I still teach short-term workshops on elements of boatbuilding, as well as a week-long class on Japanese boatbuilding. My teaching style here is more conventional, though my experiences in Japan have taught me that student engagement and commitment are paramount, therefore I try to take a “less is more” approach to my instruction. Another way to describe it is getting my students started on their projects and then let the wood and tools do the teaching.

View upcoming lectures & workshops here.

Past Classes & workshops