I had a friend ask me to assist a Software Carpentry workshop in the summer of 2014. I really enjoyed doing that and just completed the Fall 2014 instructor training. I've taught a bunch of small (weekend long) programming workshops and have taught children & adults in other capacitiess as well, and was excited to learn about more opportunities to teach. I have not yet led a Software Carpentry workshop.
I didn't have many apprehensions about the stuff inherent to teaching but If I didn't have any teaching experience I know I would. Without having seem a workshop I think I'd still be a little nervous about leading a Software Carpentry workshop - about balancing the part about just being prepared to teach with all the planning, organization, etc. Just having a good feel for what a workshop looks like beyond reading the curriculum. I'm glad I got to assist at a workshop before going through the training to become a full-fledged instructor. Even then, if I hadn't actually assisted at the workshop this summer, I would feel unsure of myself leading a workshop for the first time. I like the idea of having new potential instructors assist at a workshop, or at least watch videos or livestreams of workshops. Having a hard rule that everyone must attend/assist at a workshop doesn't seem reasonable given constraints of time & geography. -Maneesha On Fri, Dec 12, 2014 at 7:19 PM, "Rémi E." <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi all, > > On 12/12/2014 11:00 PM, Bill Mills wrote: > >> - There appears to be overwhelming support for starting the instructor >> journey the oldschool way - by attending or helping at a workshop. I also >> will join the chorus of agreement, since this is certainly the best way to >> understand what actually goes on at the event proper. But in that case, >> shall we make it official, and promote previous workshop attendance as a >> hard requirement for future instructor training? Greg and I have chatted >> about this previously, too - perhaps it's time to set it on the path to >> enshrinement. >> > > I've been teaching at only one workshop up to now, and never attended one > before. I thus want to voice a mitigated opinion. > > If the attendance requirement had been in place, I wouldn't be an > instructor today, I wouldn't have taught at a workshop and I wouldn't be > discussing here… and that would be sad :'( for me. > > Here is my story. > > I have a reasonable computer and teaching experience. I registered for the > instructor training because I was happy to find a community that cared > about teaching basic computer skills to scientists. My weekly planning was > very busy but I though: ok, I can pack a few more hours, it's worth it. And > it was: I really appreciated the dynamics of the instructor training (it > seems it even improved since then). > > While preparing the first workshop a few month later, I obviously had a > lot of interrogations. Part of them were about what the typical workshop > looks like, and obviously, having attended a workshop would have helped a > lot. > However, a lot of my interrogations won't go away for my hopefully next > workshops, as they are inherent to teaching: who is the audience, what > should be targeted for them, how much can we cover, ... > Another part of my interrogations were about organization, planning with > the hosts, and introducing the workshop. I had the chance to be with an > amazing mentor, Aleksandra Pawlik, that handled most of it. > > Overall, I managed teaching a workshop without attending one before, and I > feel the attendees were not harmed. > I think a lot of us have limited time resources (and traveling takes a lot > of it) and we might loose some people with a hard rule. > > Cheers, > Rémi > > > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists. > software-carpentry.org >
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