Putting yourself in the shoes of a student.

Once school got out, I was inundated with professional development opportunity after PD opportunity! One conference after another and while I have had a running tab of topics I wanted to write about, admittedly, I have just been too wiped out to really do much else than prepare for the upcoming school year.

Alas, today was another PD workshop- processing with Khan Academy. Day 1 of a 3-Day workshop. Luckily, I was well rested when I arrived, but pretty quickly, my energy was zapped! Coding and programming are "not my thing". I know, I know..... "Jenn, anything can be your thing! All you need is a GROWTH MINDSET!"

Yea... I know and I didn't give up. But task after task, line after line of copying and then playing around with the numbers to see what happens if I change this or that, my frustration grew. My colleagues seemed to be getting it faster than I was; they didn't seem to be struggling. They seemed... interested in it. I, on the other hand, felt like I was right back in Geometry class struggling to comprehend the reason behind a proof and what theorems applied.

I think that sometimes it helps to step into the shoes of a student and put yourself into an extremely challenging situation. Feel the emotions of being frustrated. Give praise to someone who is getting it. After some playing with the various tasks from our instructor, I've come to the conclusion that Khan Academy for programming is quite useful. It's not as easy as some of these other "learn to code" programs, but we dove into learning the language. And now I have this to show (don't judge, it's not done yet):

A more formal write up to come, just wanted to share the experience.