This generation of young people are increasingly ready to follow a training course to develop their digital skills and prepare themselves for digital jobs. Indeed, adapting to digital technology is now almost essential. This is why more and more IT teachers are being recruited.
Would you like to give programming courses too? Here's how to create great courses!
Be Passionate about Programming
Is coding your passion? Why not pass it on? One of the first qualities of a good teacher is to be passionate about what they are teaching, namely programming. Teachers who love their subject are much more able to pass on this passion.
These teachers are often more interesting to listen to and are even exciting. Only if you are passionate about your subject will you be able to capture the attention of your students. They will feel your passion for programming and will be more receptive to your instructions and lessons.
The teacher must also like to transmit his passion and therefore like to teach. When teaching computer programming, it is not only a matter of showing a sequence of codes to students so that they understand, but also of explaining and sometimes embodying what you say.
Making sense of programming and taking the time to explain the mechanics of computer coding is essential to being a good teacher. If you don't like public speaking or have no patience then it will be difficult to teach computer science on a regular basis.
Knowing How to Keep Advancing Programming Learners
Good courses are effective courses. The aim of programming courses is obviously to help students progress so that they can achieve their goals: getting into a top school, coding their own website or application, having some basic programming skills, etc.
The teacher must then do everything possible to really help his or her students progress through exercises and applications. Indeed, it is necessary to build complete and coherent theoretical courses but it is also necessary to encourage the students to apply their knowledge.
The best way to do this is to launch projects, practical exercises. Why not launch an application programming project with all the pupils? Or encourage a student in a private lesson to code? These practical cases are more concrete than theoretical lessons collected in a notebook that students often do not want to open.
Continuous Programming Training
It is essential to keep up to date with the latest IT developments. A good programming teacher should obviously have a solid knowledge and skills in programming. Often, teachers are professional programmers or students in the case of computer programming courses for beginners. In any case, it is necessary to have a higher knowledge level than the students in order to give lessons.
But programming, like many disciplines, is constantly evolving and it would be a shame to rest on our laurels. Not only because there is always room for improvement, but also because the world of programming is changing. New things come along regularly; new ways of doing things, new fashions, new knowledge.
It is essential to be aware of the latest programmings in the ever-changing digital world in order to offer the best courses to your students. Your students may also ask you many questions, which may lead you to learn about the latest programmings. So get ahead of the curve and keep up to date with the latest IT news.
Prepare Your Lessons Well in Advance
To ensure that the lessons go as smoothly as possible, the computer programming teacher, like all teachers, must spend time preparing his or her lessons. It is not enough to simply show up in front of your students and start explaining things that come to mind.
Lessons should be constructed and follow a pattern so that the lessons are coherent and enable students to progress. It is therefore imperative that the teacher takes this essential time to prepare the lesson.
It will certainly be necessary to do research, to base oneself on the needs of the students, on what is new, and above all on the objective of the students. The lessons will not be prepared in the same way if the student wishes to develop software as if he/she wishes to develop a website.
Each teacher must therefore work on his or her lesson. It is estimated that for one hour of class, the same amount of time is needed for preparation. Do not neglect this preparation work!
Questioning the Expectations of Your Students
Computer courses are not just guidance. There must be an exchange. As you will have understood, the most important thing to do in order to prepare your courses is to start by asking your students about their motivations and expectations.
This may be more difficult in the case of courses at a computer science school, since the programmes are already established, but there is nothing to stop you asking the students for their opinion.
Gathering the opinions and expectations of the students allows you to prepare the lessons in the best possible way and to perfectly match their desires. If you give private programming lessons, this step is all the more important as you have only one pupil for each lesson and the latter calls upon a private teacher for a particular reason: to have a personalised follow-up.
It is therefore advisable to use part of the first lesson, if not the entire first lesson, to set up the programme and ask the students what they want to learn. It is then up to the teacher to create a suitable programme with, of course, pedagogical suggestions from the teacher.
Take the Time to Re-Explain and Revisit
Being a teacher of programming, maths, history or piano, requires a common quality: patience. Being a teacher means repeating the same things over and over again so that the student gradually integrates them. This does not mean that students do not listen to you, but simply that they need time to integrate knowledge and skills.
The teacher also needs to know how to explain the same thing again but in a different way in order to increase the chances of students understanding. A pupil may not understand an explanation when it is explained in one way, and then it may click if the information is explained in another way. So you have to learn to be clear and innovative in getting messages across to students.
Answering the Students' Questions
Programming courses are not just a lecture by the teacher. There needs to be an exchange between students and teachers to make the lessons run as smoothly and effectively as possible. Just as asking students about their expectations, having students interact during the lesson helps to understand the pace of the students and where they are at.
Otherwise, the risk is to spend an hour talking to yourself only to realise at the end of the lesson that what you explained at the beginning of the lesson was not understood by the majority of the students. This waste of time can be annoying for both you and the students.
But be careful, leaving room for questions does not mean being interrupted every minute. There should be a time for sharing. This should be set up by the teacher who regularly asks if there are any questions. A whole session can even be created with the pupils to review what is still unclear about computer codes and so on.
Don't teach alone in your corner, ask your students to interact!
Manage Students from All Backgrounds
As a programming teacher, you will come across completely different profiles among your students. In group lessons, the teacher must therefore learn to manage the different rhythms of the students and their personalities. Some students will be more shy to ask questions and may not dare to express their lack of understanding, while others will monopolise the floor, giving you the impression that everything is understood.
A teacher must therefore be prepared for the multiplicity of student profiles and characteristics.
In individual lessons, the teacher will also have different students with sometimes very different knowledge levels. Some will want to learn the basics of programming languages such as HTML, C+, Python, or Java, while others will already know them and will want to move on to practice. It is therefore necessary to know how to juggle all these different types of students and offer courses adapted to each one.
Making Programming Courses Original
If you can, especially if you are a freelance teacher, try to add a little originality to programming courses to keep students interested. This doesn't mean that you should forget about the traditional courses, but an original practical exercise, an outdoor course, an outing to a computer convention, or something else can really make a difference in the motivation of the students.
Ready to teach programming?
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