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I taught Introduction to Programming at a University after I graduated. It was an great experience and I believe I might return to teaching later in life. The

by exline 16y ago

I taught Introduction to Programming at a University after I graduated. It was an great experience and I believe I might return to teaching later in life. The biggest issue for you will be unlearning what you already know. Since you will be dealing with someone starting at zero, you will have to teach things you take for granted. Simple things like for-loops trip up a lot of people. Keep that in mind when you are teaching her, that you might be using concepts or ideas that you didn't think about, but she doesn't understand yet. I would move as fast as possible to working on an IPhone, simple hello world aps, so she can get the visual feedback. I also would not shy away from the right way to do things, even if it is more complicated. As an example, Java was the language we taught at my school. Not knowing any different (not unlearning what I knew) I had my students properly define every class in its own file. This is just the right way to do things. Turns out all the other teachers would use a single class with private classes nested inside. My students had a small leg up on all other students, even if my best students were not even CS majors.

pilom 16y ago
Can you talk more about your days teaching. This is something I would love to do but I know my Alma Mater would never let me do anything without a PhD. Where did you teach? What expectations were there for hours? What qualifications were they looking for?
- exline 16y ago
  It was at San Diego State University. The course was CS106 which was introduction to programming, a requirement for CS students and some EE majors and some math majors I believe. Technically I was a guest lecturer. I got my first job as a programmer through one of my professors. He was pretty well connected with several companies in San Diego. SDSU was switching most of its courses to be taught in Java. They also had MSCE certification courses and were starting Java certification courses. I had just landed a new job at a local java shop. My old professor was looking for professionals to teach the new java courses. I was a pretty good developer and my name came up to teach the course (which paid pretty well.) But he decided that I need some teaching experience and got me to teach the intro to programming course to give me the experience. I know he had to pull a few strings to make it happen since I was not a grad student and not exactly a seasoned professional. It turned out to be a great experience. I really enjoyed it. The pay was horrible. After preping for the lecture, grading, office hours and the lecture, I think it worked out to ~$12/hour. Quite a bit less than I was making as a regular developer. So I only taught the one semester. I know of another guy I used to work with who was a horrible developer. I mean really bad. I believed he had a masters degree. But he taught extension courses at UCSD. I think the extension courses have a lot less restrictions on the requirements. From there he ended up teaching full time at another college, can't remember where. It was another small one in San Diego. This might be an option to allow you to teach if they offer extension classes.

by exline 16y ago

pilom 16y ago

Can you talk more about your days teaching. This is something I would love to do but I know my Alma Mater would never let me do anything without a PhD. Where did you teach? What expectations were there for hours? What qualifications were they looking for?

exline 16y ago
It was at San Diego State University. The course was CS106 which was introduction to programming, a requirement for CS students and some EE majors and some math majors I believe. Technically I was a guest lecturer. I got my first job as a programmer through one of my professors. He was pretty well connected with several companies in San Diego. SDSU was switching most of its courses to be taught in Java. They also had MSCE certification courses and were starting Java certification courses. I had just landed a new job at a local java shop. My old professor was looking for professionals to teach the new java courses. I was a pretty good developer and my name came up to teach the course (which paid pretty well.) But he decided that I need some teaching experience and got me to teach the intro to programming course to give me the experience. I know he had to pull a few strings to make it happen since I was not a grad student and not exactly a seasoned professional. It turned out to be a great experience. I really enjoyed it. The pay was horrible. After preping for the lecture, grading, office hours and the lecture, I think it worked out to ~$12/hour. Quite a bit less than I was making as a regular developer. So I only taught the one semester. I know of another guy I used to work with who was a horrible developer. I mean really bad. I believed he had a masters degree. But he taught extension courses at UCSD. I think the extension courses have a lot less restrictions on the requirements. From there he ended up teaching full time at another college, can't remember where. It was another small one in San Diego. This might be an option to allow you to teach if they offer extension classes.