Teaching is something iStratetyLabs fully supports — nay encourages — for its employees both internally and within the community. We have a multitude of opportunities to both teach and learn from our coworkers. We have “Battle Schools”, which allow team members to teach a topic they’re passionate about to follow ISL-ers. It’s a great way to learn and a great way to practice public speaking. There are other awesome things we do, but they’re G-14 classified! You’ll have to join the team in order to have access to such knowledge.
A few months ago, Samia Khan wrote the post “What’s it like to be a student at General Assembly”. At the time I was just getting started with my Front End Web Development course. I thought I’d give an alternate account to round out the experience so that potential students as well as instructors have an idea of what to expect from a GA class.
I began a GA 10-week front end web development (FEWD) course back in May. Other than the standard instructor preparation I wasn’t sure what to expect. What I walked away with was much more than a teaching experience. Sure, I created lesson plans, spoke in front of people on a regular basis, critiqued assignments, and all the other responsibilities that come along with being an instructor of any kind, but that’s just the beginning.
Having to teach people what you take for granted every day is an incredibly enlightening experience. I found that concepts/ideas that I thought to be simple and straightforward are actually nuanced and fairly complicated. On the other hand, concepts that I thought I understood well, were brought forth and I was forced to reevaluate my own understanding– this is a humbling experience to say the least.
On the first day of class expectations are set. Students are informed that the course is not designed to create expert front end developers, rather, to provide building blocks and tools that can be used to enrich an individual’s knowledge and experience — “Give a man a fish…” you know the rest. One thing I had to reiterate to my students was that professional developers (and myself by extension) don’t know everything and that asking for help and googling for answers was a big part of the job. I even touched briefly on the myth of the genius programmer.
By far the most rewarding portion of the class was final presentations. There were students who, prior to the course, had never really touched HTML/CSS/JavaScript and whom by the end, presented interactive websites and in some cases the beginnings of web applications! Creating a foundation of working knowledge that empowers students to grow individually is a responsibility I do not take lightly. It was an honor and privilege to take part in that process. Kudos to my TAs Michael Dick and Rami Chowdhury — you guys rock.
