Trials of Teaching

So a lot of us help people out on the boards but has anyone ever been a teacher or a tutor.

I'm in a position now where I'm teaching Java to developers who have several years of experience programming in other languages (most of them in multiple languages) and they all have experience with IDEs. So you can imagine my surprise that every session thus far I've gotten the question.. "Ok how do I create a new project/file/etc..." I mean I could get it if people forgot things about coding or some of the stuff about the language but how to create a file. Are you serious?

I mean when I was working with kids, that were you know, younger than me it was easy to just tell them to extricate their heads from their posteriors and focus but I find myself in a position where I need to be a bit more diplomatic.

*sigh*

Anyone else have interesting stories about teaching programming?

Haven't been a teacher myself, but I can speak from my student experience!

Why not teaching them Java with a good ol' console (javac, then java to run, CLASSPATH; at the end of the course, ant and co.)?

They will take all the time they want to 'learn' an IDE by themselves...

I was a "job coach" between high school and college one summer teaching disabled kids how to use computers. That was back in the DOS and dumb terminal days. Some of the kids were really sharp mentally just had physical disabilities. Others were able to type about three characters per minute at roughly 0% accuracy. Overall though I found the experience pretty rewarding and eye opening. Some of the kids were really great to work with and made it a good experience.

Would I ever want to train supposedly fully functional adults? Hell no. Good luck with that ... ;-) And for exactly the reasons/experience you cite.

Teaching PHP ... and then I hear, "Wait, I don't know HTML yet"

I once tutored students. It was mainly in trig. I only had one student above high school, a really dumb bunny trying to lean VB.

The woman who was feeding me the contracts gave me all the good students: the ones who were looking for a leg up on NEXT year. She kept for herself the ones who were failing.

It was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life. Each student (aside from the aforesaid VB wannabe) had some particular and different block to the understanding of the material.

During the first (and sometimes, the second) session(s), I would toss out analogies. I would watch the student for any signs of the lightbulb turning on. When that happened, I was home free.

It was a truly wonderful experience. I threw out one kid whose mother thought she was paying me to do his homework and I threw out the VB student who thought the same. I did make them pay me for the time spent determining they were failure-prone assholes with no intention of actually learning. Heh.

I've taught undergraduate and graduate students. Tact is needed.

I always flunked at least one student each term. None of this 'passing because I showed up" stuff for me.

There are always some students who actually want to learn. They are fun to teach. Some that are there because someone told them to take the course, and a third group who are just taking up space. The last two groups are hard to take.

I plan to head a programming club in my highschool next year. We've finally got some real talent so we can do this thing.

We'll need to start off teaching the newbies the ins and outs of coding. Basically, we'll have people who are logically inclined, but haven't done much yet.

This will be a challenge. However, if we can do this properly, we can cover everything comp sci AP wants in about two-three months and spend the rest of the time on much more interesting things... mathematical programs, scientific programs, networking, maybe some intense graphics... or maybe just teaching how to really think about design instead of focusing on particulars.

I'll probably be supported by two friends of mine, both of which are great at math, and both of which have some real experience.

I was a COBOL lecturer, no problems there, but at the same time I was teaching applications (MS Works in DOS), I think I've told the story more than once about catching two lads 'cogging' ...

Nope, never told it

I used to try to help people with math/computer science in high school, but oftentimes I got too frustrated to be of help. I have a short patience for people who just don't 'get it' after I've broken it down as far as I think is possible. Although I do much better when 'student' is asking questions about what part they don't get and actually trying to learn.

I think it would be fun to teach but I don't believe I'll have the patience to do so for another 30 or 40 years. At least not without a handpicked crop of students.

-MBirchmeier