On Dec 10, 2021, at 8:31 PM, Bob Houghton via groups.arrl.org <rowland_physics=yahoo.com@...> wrote:

Hello, my name is Bob Houghton AD6QF. I am a retired high school physics teacher. Over my career, I have had about 40 students get licensed. I was fortunate to attend two Teacher Institutes with Mark Spencer. Those two TI workshops were among the best in my teaching career. While I am no longer in the classroom, I am still very interested in helping to create the next generation of hams. One challenge I faced is that my students were often seniors. They would get interested in ham radio, study and get licensed and participate in a few school club activities and then graduate. A few continued their amateur radio activity in college, one becoming an officer in the Stanford Amateur Radio Club. Many have gone on to engineering and other professional careers. When I check QRZ, I can see that many have renewed their licenses after 10 years, but I can find no evidence of on-the-air activity. So my interest is finding ways to help young hams bridge the gap between getting licensed and becoming active in the hobby. ARRL has had many initiatives to attract new hams, but I think we need to find ways to get them on the air and active in some meaningful way. I think YOTA is a good effort in this direction.