FWIW (no teaching experience here): In Russia, they're using Pascal to teach programming although I would try to explain programming in some basic abstract conc

FWIW (no teaching experience here): In Russia, they're using Pascal to teach programming although I would try to explain programming in some basic abstract concepts. Like: Program is a list of instructions for computer to do and variable is a "box" where some value is contained. To make it more engaging you probably need to homebrew some nice and easy to understand demos. Random idea: write a simple graphical library for visualisation for your favourite language to use with your demos.