I have been loving my new job in the private sector, but have lately been curious about my students. I want to be sure they are learning programming, not just kind of… there. It’s what I have heard about other “computer science” classes at other schools, what my own students complained about happening at their old schools. The students don’t actually learn programming, or if they do they don’t like it at all. The class becomes almost a study hall, sometimes they do online work but they don’t really learn anything from it. It can be teachers who don’t know what they are doing, students who don’t want to learn it, or terrible/missing curriculum.
I wonder if my first year was like this, if I didn’t actually teach my students but was almost learning with them. It’s what was most likely happening, but I hope that I pulled them along with me. If I was learning with them, then they should have been getting the same info I was. More than anything though, I was always trying to get them to WANT to learn it. I wanted it to be interesting, fun, and challenging. I know at least one of those goals was probably not being accomplished at sometime or another, but if the other two goals were being met then I most likely was keeping the students on track.
Now it’s frustrating, seeing students not care/not learn. I want to somehow encourage all of them, tell them if they aren’t learning in class they can go elsewhere (I have another post about where any student can go, and where teachers can get help). This is why I have thought about doing YouTube videos, so that I can make code interesting, fun, and challenging (like I hope I did in the classroom).
As a teacher I do miss the students, but more than anything I miss seeing them learn.