“With an education, you have everything you need to rise above all the noise and fulfill every last one of your dreams.”-Michelle Obama
I love seeing women learning to code, their passion and how many examples we can get from how their work is using technology to enhance humanity. Teaching has been something I have been doing since I was in college as a volunteer or as a side project. I love teaching because I believe education is one of the most fulfilling and impactful endeavours in people’s lives. I feel that through sharing knowledge, building curriculum and teaching, I have found an innate passion for connecting with another human being in a different level and being able to witness how they learn new skills and better themselves. Especially when they experience the “AHA” moment (when the lights go on behind the student’s eyes).
How teaching started for me:
“While I do enjoy building (specially front-end), I’ve never before built something with the ability to make such a successful impact to someone’s life”.
When I was learning to code, I started putting together different workshops and volunteering for different organizations to empower and teach women to code. My goal back then was to be able to share all the resources and opportunities I was getting with other women like me who were new into coding. For example, if I had a chance to meet an experienced developer willing to invest time on teaching me something, I will also facilitate a study group of the workshop so others can benefit from this opportunity. This leads me to get super involved with organizations such as Girl Develop It and Women Who Code where I had a chance to create, organize and facilitate workshops and events. Furthermore, I discover a love for breaking down complex concepts for beginners and either teaching or designing instructional content.
Teaching Coding in Spanish:
Learning to code can be overwhelming, I remember when I was learning I have some days when I felt super frustrated because I will get tired quicker than my peers, and
I ended up superly drained. However, one day I found a video tutorial in my native language explaining the fundamentals of a complex topic and that made such a huge difference for me. I was able to understand quickly and being able to absorb even more concepts per day. Maybe unconsciously besides learning to code, I was also translating and taking more brain energy.
That’s why last year, I decided to create and find opportunities where I could help Spanish speakers to learn to code.
Becoming a GDI Teacher:
GDISF’s gave me the opportunity to put together a workshop to teach intro to code in Spanish. Building my own program and platform is awesome, but becoming a GDI teacher with the opportunity to teach a coding workshop in Spanish-building out lessons and objectives for an entirely new course-felt even more amazing. I don’t have enough words to describe how wonderful was my experience with GDI. I am super grateful with all the chapter leaders and coordinators, they have fully supported me in all the stages of the workshop, from planning, promoting, handling the logistics and follow-ups to cheering for me the whole way. It’s incredible how a strong supportive community can make such a positive impact on someone’s lives.
This class had never been offered before in Spanish, which meant I had a lot of curriculum to build. Building out lessons and objectives for a new course-felt exciting. It was incredibly rewarding to have students come up to me after class telling me their stories, sharing about how much they loved the class environment we created and thanking me for teaching the class.
Why I’ll continue:
“I like teaching coding because it’s iterative and it’s teaching confidence on the ability to be imperfect and to fail, to try and to learn something that we thought we were unable to do”
I still remember my excitement about programming on my first day, and the excitement of learning and trying different new ways. Seeing my students grow and learn is such an incredible experience. My programming journey is not even close to coming to an end, I will always be eager to keep learning. There are many stereotypes about developers and for many people, latina engineers are not an even close representation of programmers.
I think one of the big reasons why I love teaching is because I believe education is one of the most fulfilling and impactful endeavours in people’s lives. I feel that through sharing knowledge and teaching, I have found an innate passion for connecting with another human being in a different level and being able to witness how they learn new skills and better themselves. Especially when they experience the “AHA” moment (when the lights go on behind the student’s eyes).
Acknowledgements:
Organizations that make it possible for me to teach coding in Spanish:
Girl Develop It (Karla Lopez — Our coordinator)
Slack HQ (Brenda Jin, Cristian Viveros)
Galvanize
General Assembly
TA’s involved in my journey teaching coding in Spanish:
Blanca Sanchez
Melody Serra
Cristina Del Puerto
Tools I use in my workshops or programs:
So much more needs to be done. Don’t Be Shy, Get Involved!
“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, invest in women’s leadership.”-Corinne Warnshuis ( GDI Executive Director )
GDI is always looking for amazing new teachers and TA’s, are you interested or do you see an excellent teacher or ta? Ask them if they’re interested in teaching and email [email protected]
New in teaching? Here is a good resource to read:
- Confessions of a Public Speaker. It’s got great tips and tricks in it for speakers and teachers alike.
