A month of Javascript

Or, how to be a better mentor.

There is a huge number of articles already existing on how to learn coding. And they basically say the same, do it, get a mentor, ask for help, have a goal, ignore the idiots and don’t be afraid. I read plenty of them for years and as a technically talented Designer with fluent markup, soldering and other tech related skills it was just to lazy learning how to code. Or wasn’t I?

Amongst mentor’s I might have the luxury model but there is more . And it took me a long time until I was ready to accept Peter’s help. Peter is a Teacher for Javascript, HTML and CSS. His job is to know what is state of the art and why we are doing it. We are both giving Workshops. Today I’m able to compare Peters mentorship to other developers, trying to explain or teaching me how it has to be done. That very difference I like to share and point out why it might be harder for women and why a good teacher worth a world.

Only one Mentor works

My biggest mistake was, too many mentors. Instead of one person I had plenty of super brains knowing what is going on, what i was doing wrong and how it should be solved. And instead of solid knowledge or let’s call it consistent knowledge, I was torn apart between different opinions. Nothing can be worse than a conflict embedded in your learning experience.

Listen to your student

Peter said one day, “now we’re gonna do something my students hate” and asked me to read my very simple lines of code out loud. I learned, I have to talk myself through my code. Peter listened to my thoughts and how my knowledge is structured. Then he fixed my knowledge (not the code i wrote) or added knowledge I was missing. Important is, he was listening to what i said. Mansplaining is a well known disease amongst developers and a guarantee to ruin the fun.

Example: A good friend pointed out i’m using too much brackets and Peter didn’t. Because at that point it wasn’t important for my learning curve. When i got in trouble because of my brackets he told me why it is important to keep our syntax flat.

Let them climb walls

You always stumble on bugs and at some point I was able to fix most of them myself but sometimes not. One Weekend I was searching and reading and calculating and when I finally asked Peter for help he didn’t said much. He asked me three questions and I was able to fix it myself. Most of the people I asked for help just showed me “how it’s done”. That’s not how you master a skill. I didn’t do all this to have someone else write my lines of code. Dumping knowledge isn’t teaching!

Never feeling stupid

As a woman I have certain issues to ask for help. It is very difficult for me in my german community to show weakness or something else which would decrease my value. I have to be very careful and I trained myself that way. It was hard for me to give up my wall. Letting someone inside my world where i’m stupid, human, frustrated, happy etc. was difficult. If you ask for help you get plenty. A bit too much. Reduce my mentorship program to one person helped and having Peter, ignoring my weirdness was key. This is a particular issue for woman I believe. We learned to master many skills just by ourselves because in public is a terrible idea (opinions, judgements, comments etc.). It makes us even stronger because a self taught skill is durable. Learning how to code with a Mentor was a lot more fun than stumbling around in our fragmented world of programming languages. And it was much faster.

How to thank your teacher

Well, there is only one thing. Code. Every day I wrote down what I have learned or shouldn’t forget. It helped, I have a whole website filled with notes, demos and comments. The only way you can make your teacher happy is to use what you have learned.

be a better Mentor

If you like to teach coding or accompany a designer or a woman who is learning how to code I strongly advice to keep 90% of your thoughts to yourself, listen, and deliver only the necessary amount of information needed. I do not like to be ungrateful but coding is fun, only if you found the right partner. Your student will choose a path on its own.

I did, in one month i’ve learned how to handle objects, arrays, deal with jQuery, help myself through the terrible documentation of jQuery. Stress my Chrome developer tools and I can’t wait for my Data binding chapter.

Thank you Peter for listening. ❤