The Moon is Implicit - 2020/04/19

Odds and Ends

(Photo: Wolves having a disagreement at the Wildlife Safari Park, October-ish of 2019)

Happy weekend, all. This week’s issue is going to be a shorter one.

I spent last week wrapping up a two-week intro to Ruby/Rails course I taught for a company in Omaha (more write-ups about that soon) to bring new hires (who had all been writing software for years) up to speed on that company’s particular set of languages and tools. The course went really well, especially given that it’s the first time I’ve done it and also the global conditions we’re in.

The coolest things my students reported at the end were that they felt like they understood more of what they were looking at and they felt empowered by that understanding to go do cooler work.

It was really gratifying. A notion I’ve held my entire career is the idea that my students (or more junior coworkers) should outgrow me. I’ve had (and worked with) teachers who worked, whether consciously or otherwise, to make their students depend on them. That’s never really appealed to me. I want my students to grow beyond what I can really help them with.

At the same time, my daughter is slowly becoming more independent and somewhat quickly seeking out that independence. That part is sometimes hard for me, as sometimes in my mind she’s still my baby. She grows faster than I do, at times, and it’s sometimes hard to keep up. This isn’t unusual, but it’s interesting to note that I have that attachment/resistance sometimes. I have to ask myself “Do I want to say no because it’s a bad idea, or do I want to say no because I’m still attached to this being something she doesn’t/can’t do yet?”

That said, since my class wrapped on Tuesday, I decided to take Wednesday through Friday off. This five-day stretch is the longest stretch I’ve had off in at least a few months, and it’s been really lovely to get to play with LEGO blocks, stomp around in the snow, and so on. Ordinarily I’d want to fill this time up with things to do and places to go, but having our current constraints in place has helped us to spend better time together.

But since I took some time off, I did almost no non-COVID or non-programming reading this week, and instead mostly stayed off my computer. It was nice, particularly after a few straight 70+ hour weeks (the next time I decide to teach a course for the first time and write a textbook for the course concurrently, I will probably stop myself instead of repeating this experience).

I anticipate having links to share again next week, including but not limited to a link to a forthcoming book I’ve started writing (and a way to sign up to get updates). It’ll be called Teaching from First Principles, and will be a distillation of everything I’ve learned about learning and teaching (and teaching teachers). I’m writing it specifically for people who are “teaching without a license” (to borrow a phrase from my wife), that is, coaches, adjunct instructors, teaching artists, people with online courses, and the like.

Most of those folks have to figure it out as they go and often get little to no professional support in teaching.

I want to smooth the way a bit. History suggests that I can.

Please stay well-hydrated, everyone. More soon.

-ae