On Wednesday, I will be teaching a small group of teenagers how to program, using Python. I'm both extremely enthusiastic about this, and scared out of my mind. As the day actually approaches, my mood tends to oscillate toward the latter more often :)
I have prepared some material... I think enough for the first session. But really, I don't know. I think the pace of the first lessons is ok, but then I wonder if it's too boring. I have prepared some cool examples that progressively grow out of the concepts we learn, but then I wonder if it's too much at once, or if I'm stretching the examples too much. Will this be entertaining enough to hold the attention of 7 teenagers for a couple of hours?
I know this will be an excellent learning experience for me. I'm very familiar with the material so I'm not concerned about this, although it will be a curse at first while I try to remember what it's like to learn all those concepts for the first time. I'm more concerned about being able to find different, good metaphors to explain the same concept in different ways. That's where I fell short last time I tried to teach someone. I wonder if there's a course somewhere that teaches how to think like that :) I am very motivated to learn, and while I do so, I will try my best to at least not turn these people off programming forever...!! (No pressure.) I suspect there are some things about teaching, that you can only learn while doing it. Don't take my word for it just yet, though ;)
Any tip, advice, suggestion or word of encouragement very much appreciated! I will post the material I'm using after Wednesday, once I get a better idea of what actually fits in one session.
Good luck with the teaching! It can be very rewarding, and I'm sure a small group is the best way to start. The best advice I can give is to try to keep track of what each one has understood so far, and explain what they don't yet know in terms of what they do already know. That way, not only do you have the best chance of successful teaching, but also it makes the pace of the teaching adjust naturally to what is best. #1. Posted by John Sturdy on Tue 16 Feb 2010, 16:07
I don't know if I mentioned yesterday but my FYP lecturer told me something about this before.
He said that he would always have enough material of a certain difficulty for the majority of the class and the majority of the time. He would also have some more interesting and difficult content prepared for those who showed genuine interest or found the main lesson easy.
I guess it will depend on how the students are on the day and you might have to vary it a bit based on what you learn about them. #2. Posted by Barry on Tue 16 Feb 2010, 17:59
John, Barry, thanks for the helpful tips! I'll try my best to make use of them tomorrow. I have a few exercises down my sleeve for students moving fast although it is very hard to come up with exercise ideas, I find, when only a few of the main programming concepts have been taught! And I'll try to keep in tune with the group when explaining, although it looks like we're going to start with people already at different levels, which should make things even more interesting (huh!). #3. Posted by jpichon (Website) on Tue 16 Feb 2010, 22:02