For it is in giving that we receive
How we spent our holiday during lockdown
Note: This Medium post is co-authored by Johanna and I. We are Computer Science students at the National University of Singapore, I’m in my final year and Jo is 1 year my junior.
The beginning of our journey
A few months back, Jo and I were on a Zoom call. We were supposed to be discussing our algorithms assignment, but I was bored and I went on Instagram instead. One post caught my eye.
Mon: “Jo lu libur Desember gabut ga” (Jo are you gonna be free during the December holiday?)
Jo: “Ha emang kenapa” (Huh why?)
Mon: “Daftar ini yu” (Let’s sign up for this)
Jo: “Wot” (What?)
Unbeknownst to us, this random conversation was the start of a truly rewarding experience. We had our doubts (“Should we even sign up? What if we’re not good enough to be mentors? 🥺”), but we signed up anyway. To me, I’ve always wanted to contribute back to the women-in-STEM community but I was not sure how. To Jo, if covid hadn’t happened, she would not have been able to teach as she lives in Surabaya while the event was normally conducted in Jakarta. Fortunately, the stars aligned, and we were picked to mentor the CS101 English class for GenG’s Winter Club — a 5-day coding bootcamp for high school girls in Indonesia.
CS101
While working on the teaching materials, we brainstormed on what programming concepts and teaching methodology are crucial to make our rookies’ learning experience enriching and fun. We started with the fundamental ideas of Computer, Algorithm, Variables, Data Types, and Input/Output on Day 1 to give a basic understanding of programming in Python. We then continued with Data Manipulation, Math Expressions, Logical Operators, Comparison, and Control Flow on Day 2. Day 3 was the most challenging out of all the days, as we delved into List and Loops. Finally, we wrapped all the materials taught into the concept of Function on Day 4. Throughout the week, we also revised the previous day's materials through Kahoot or implemented them on revision questions. Finally, the rookies would present their final project on Day 5 — using everything that they had learned in the past 4 days.
Highlights
Teaching via Zoom was not easy, but it didn’t stop us from having a good time! Here are some of the highlights:
Interacting with the rookies
Unlike in previous years, Winter Club 2020 was conducted online, so a 1-to-1 interaction with the rookies is really hard to come by. Fortunately, we had office hours where rookies could just book slots with us or the TAs (Saskia & Shafira) to chat. Sometimes the rookies came with questions about the materials we covered in class. It was truly rewarding every time they had their ‘aha’ moments — when they finally understood a concept or an algorithm — like something just clicked!
During those office hours, we got to know each rookie more personally too. Some were already in their final year of high school and were intending to major in a tech-related field. Others were still figuring out what they want to do in the future. We exchanged personal stories — about why we decided to major in Computer Science, our highs and lows throughout university, what it’s like being a woman in the tech industry, etc. Besides this, we also bonded on other banal, random things like a mutual love towards Kim Seon-ho, pets, and kdramas among other things lol.
Final project presentation
The final project presentation marked the culmination of the rookies’ Winter Club journey. They have learned a lot of new concepts in the past 4 days, so they had to use all of that knowledge to create a project on their own. And they did 👏 not 👏 disappoint 👏.
All of their projects were really creative! Some of them coded classic games like Hangman or Tic-Tac-Toe, some created their own games like a typing game or a Tamagotchi-like virtual pet game. Some integrated an external API to send Whatsapp messages, some created systems to match people in hackathons, along with a website for a better user experience. This list is barely one-third of the class and we could go on and on about all of their projects. Note that for most of them, Winter Club was their first time learning about coding. We set high expectations, but our rookies manage to surpass all of them with flying colors. We really couldn’t be any prouder :””)
Retrospective sessions
Finally, this is more of a behind-the-scenes highlight: retro (i.e. retrospective sessions) with the GenG team. Every day, we had a retro with the other mentors, TAs, and volunteers and raised any feedback. Together, we would share what works or does not work in our class, brainstorm ideas (e.g. “how should we make the class vibes more chill?”), and rack our brains on how to improve for the following day. Sure, the days were long and tiring, but it was truly heartening to see how committed everyone was to contribute to making Winter Club the best experience the rookies could have.
Challenges
Teaching method
Initially, it was a challenge for us to break down the materials into smaller bits to make them more understandable. As both of us had no prior programming experience before we entered university, we learned all these technical concepts in our first programming course in university. The way we learned as university students might be different from how our rookies actually could absorb them. Therefore, we had to come up with more creative means, such as using flowcharts to explain the logic of loops or analogies for abstract concepts like functions.
Technical difficulties
Engaging people in real life is already difficult, let alone doing it via Zoom. There were a few “krik krik” (awkward) moments in between, but our energetic TAs and volunteers constantly helped to hype up the chat!
Things might not always go on smoothly, but what matters is what we do from there. We had a grand plan to revise the concept of Loops using the flowcharts that I drew on my iPad. However, it just happened that my wifi was down that morning, and I could not turn on my camera while sharing her iPad screen concurrently. Trying to think on our feet, we decided that we should just re-draw the flowcharts on Johanna’s laptop, then I would still be doing the narration while Johanna was annotating on her laptop. Phew! (teamwork makes the dream work ayy)
Key Takeaways
We learn more by teaching
If we cannot teach something to others, that means we haven’t truly understood it completely. When we were teaching, a few times we stumbled while trying to explain things that “looked obvious” to us — but this meant that we previously did not understand the rationale or intuition behind it. Thus, teaching helped us to crystallize our thoughts and understand the materials we taught more in-depth. We also learned a lot from the rookies’ creative way of thinking, of course!
There is no limit to your creativity
Seeing the final project presentation taught us that creativity has no limit! The rookies were taught simple programming concepts, but their creativity led them to create amazing things. So if anyone ever tells you “no this is not possible”, use your creativity to come up with a way to do it.
Having a strong community is empowering
So far in the GenG community, we’ve had the opportunity to learn from inspiring speakers, ask questions in a safe space, and connect with like-minded women and allies in the tech industry. We’ve also had the chance to share bits and pieces of our own personal journey with the rookies, and hopefully, they found it useful in their own ways. All of this would not have happened if it weren’t for GenG providing us the platform to do so.
Parting message
To GenG, thank you for believing in us even when we doubt ourselves. Mentoring in Winter Club has been an unforgettable experience that we will cherish for a very long time!
To all of our rookies, thank you for being such an amazing bunch ❤️ Best believe that you girls will do amazing things in life! Looking forward to that :)
To our TAs and volunteers, we really couldn’t have done it without all of you :”) Y’all rock!
Finally, to all the young girls out there:
- sign up for GenG events you won’t regret it :P
- if you have some experience in tech, do consider signing up as mentors and pay it forward :)
- lastly, if you ever feel like you don’t belong just because you don’t look like the stereotypical image of someone working in the tech industry, nope. You belong. ❤️
