Reflections on Teaching Intro to Programming

Over the last semester I had the pleasure of teaching programming as an adjunct professor at a local major university. I sought out this opportunity because I genuinely enjoy teaching, I knew I’d have a little extra time on my hands, and I think it’s valuable to my current assignment to be in the community putting a face to the Air Force. I cold-called the computer science department and asked around just prior to the fall semester, and they were interested in bringing me on for the spring semester. More than that - they wanted someone to turn their existing Intro to Programming (in Python) course into an Internet-based course. Python is my jam, so this sounded good.

I learned a lot while teaching this class: about teaching, about students, about learning Python, and about learning programming in-general. I wanted to put my thoughts down because they’ve been bubbling around in my head. I think this would be a great talk topic for some nerd conference too, so it makes sense to take the notes while they’re fresh.