Sheer Joy

There is no greater reward for a teacher than when a class of students is enthusiastically engaged in learning and expresses delight in what they are doing. When it comes in the last class on Friday, it’s even sweeter!

This is awesome!

It’s so cool!

I want to do this all day long!

These were the comments from my students at the end of the day and week as they reluctantly packed up their laptops and headed out of the door towards home. They had been thoroughly engaged, both mentally and emotionally, and the energy in the room was amazing.

The Computer Programming class at ICS has grown over the years from around 6 students to now 23 students learning the basics of programming. We’ve used various tools and techniques to teach programming, but we’ve settled on using Processing as an introduction to Java and object-oriented programming (and hence a good introduction to the IB Diploma Computer Science course) …but it is also engaging and appealing to a broad range of students.

In Friday’s class, students were building their first program. They had explored Processing and seen what kinds of things could be built. They’d looked at the code – a mess of {s and ;s and weird words like void and println. Now it was time to dig in and get started.

It was a wild ride. I wish I’d had the time or presence of mind to take photos and videos, but I was too busy bouncing between presenting programming basics to the whole class (what on Earth are those { } for??), helping individuals trouble-shoot, high-fiving kids who were eager to show what they’d done, etc. Every single student had a huge smile on their face and were eagerly sharing with their tablemates what they were doing & asking what the others were doing.

It is that kind of experience which teachers live for.

I’m lucky that I teach a practical, engaging course like computer programming. Students are creating new things and actively engaged in learning. They get to immediately practice and implement what they are taught and get immediate feedback when it works (or doesn’t). Sure, there’s a fun element to it (and Processing makes programming fun from the start), but the main thing is the success. They write some code, click “run” and immediately the computer does what they tell it. Their code creates an image on the screen as they imagined. Or it doesn’t, and they have to figure out what they need to do to make it work they way they want. Click “run” again – instant feedback.

My favourite times were when students would ask me, “what would happen if I did ______ instead?” I got to smile broadly and say, “Don’t wait for me to tell you. Try it out!” The students were experimenting and trying things out – a real inquiry activity. I had to give them enough information to make sure they got working programs, but they could alter the data and order of commands to make different programs. As I said to them, “The worst thing that will happen is you’ll get an error message and you’ll need to either fix it or change it to something else.”

If only teaching was like this every day. The reality is that this kind of energetic and energizing lesson is a rare treat. Teaching is one of the most demanding, emotionally draining and stressful jobs around. It’s seriously hard work. (And deadly serious work!)

But when a lesson goes like this, a teacher is on top of the world.