One Month of Teaching Programming
It’s a month of lessons into our #learntocode group (we took a few weeks off over the holidays) and I’ve been learning a lot about myself, my students, programming and how people learn entirely new concepts.
Primary lessons learned are:
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When starting out with teaching, it’s very easy to overwhelm the beginner with too much information. It’s tempting to say “don’t worry about XYZ right now”.
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Its also very easy to leave out too much information by saying “don’t worry about XYZ” all the time.
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Because of 1&2, it’s easy to fall into the trap of having hard and fast rules - “explain everything” or “explain nothing”. This is bad, because now you’re treating everyone like they learn the same way. This leads to my next lesson…
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Every student is different and will comprehend certain topics at a different pace.
I look forward to the next month as we dive more into Rails and start building larger projects with more complexity.
For those that have taught people programming, what has been your experience with striking that balance of just the right amount of information? Send me an email - I’d love to chat.
For those that haven’t taught people programming, what has been your experience with a teacher striking that balance? Hit reply - I’d also love to chat.