Why I Teach at the Turing School
The essence of it is continuous improvement
Just over one year ago, I started teaching front-end web development at the Turing School of Software and Design, and I’m a remarkably better developer because of it. If you haven’t heard of Turing before, it’s an intensive, full-time educational program for learning web development.
The program at Turing is seven months long, which is a longer program than most coding schools, and it’s because we believe students should graduate with the skills to be career ready — students learn not just programming, but also the professional skills necessary for success in a new, unfamiliar industry.
The seven-month program is broken down into four sequential modules, each module being six weeks long. As an instructor, I teach one module a few times in a row, which means:
- I have a close link to the material because of repetition
- I can iterate on the module’s material every six weeks, free to change technologies and concepts to the latest or widely used in industry
- Because of #2, students and instructors learn what is most applicable in industry today and every new module evolves to provide a better education
What school that you went to has an opportunity to iterate on material that quickly? For that matter, what software company have you worked at where you can easily change technologies to match your latest requirements?
As a developer, this frequent change can be unnerving at first. How do you know where to invest your time with technologies you’re using? In reality, the fundamental technologies in the curriculum don’t change that often (e.g. we teach React on the front-end, which probably isn’t going anywhere soon), but the libraries used within frameworks can change from module-to-module.
Because of all of these iteration cycles, I’ve improved my own growth mindset, and I no longer have that initial fear of, “Will I be able to adjust to this new tech?” I’ve been through enough experimentation, new technologies, practice weeding out bad libraries, and sorting through new documentation to say, “I’ve got this, and our students will love it.”
If you’re interested in becoming a student or instructor at the Turing School of Software and Design, reach out to me!
