Learning goals for this course

Coming into this course, I feel very excited and only a little apprehensive! I think this will be a great opportunity to develop my communication and teaching skills – I have summarised the main things I’d like to focus on below:

• Work on explanations – in previous teaching roles I struggle to sometimes summarise concepts for someone without the same background and experience as me (like a child!). While I’m pretty confident and outgoing, I think I can definitely get tangled in my words when it comes to more complex ideas and would like to learn how to articulate this in a way that doesn’t frustrate learners.

• Develop presentation skills – I’ve done a small number of presentations in the past and feel I’m getting the hang of it but some more experience would be super handy. I’d like to learn how to create and organise presentations, and deliver them in a way that feels coherent and engaging. Specifically delivering to a classroom is a more specific subsection that I’d love to focus on, as it’s totally new to me and I can see could be really challenging (in a good way!).

• Understand how to create engaging materials for kids – I love chatting and playing with kids, but in my experience it can definitely be difficult to maintain their attention on more tedious tasks, and coding taught not so effectively can definitely fall into that trap and become dull. I’d like to learn how to produce lessons/materials that really capture children’s interest while teaching them something valuable.

• Understand the teaching experience and if it suits me – I’ve seen this goal a few times and it really resonates with me. With one year left of my degree I’m at a turning point career wise and with my enjoyment so far of tutoring I’d love to explore teaching as a possibility, see what it’s like from actual teachers and based on further experience, and discover if it could go somewhere for me.

• Inspire kids/learners! This is not so much a goal but something I’ve enjoyed in the past – I love getting kids excited and inspired about what they can do. I have a lot of enthusiasm for supporting learners (and too much energy in general) and delivered correctly I have a lot I’d like to give to support kids! I also know from experience it’s very nice to be taught computing sometimes by people who are not men – I think it can definitely subconsciously shape how young people perceive the field.

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