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So I was the lead systems analyst at a local community college. Lead the team that did the online presence. (searching for classes, signing up for classes, creating instructional websites etc.....)
Good team large college 80k students each year. So we had a huge (and still do) online presence.
In the evenings I taught mostly continuing ed classes to people who wanted to learn a new skill. Everyone once in awhile I taught a credit class to the 'kids'. Continuing Ed ROCKED! those people wanted to learn and usually had a passion for whatever was being taught. The for credit kids was a complete mixed bag. Some wanted to learn because they wanted this to be their career. The others. Well they dropped fairly soon when I wouldn't install something for them or what not.
To err is human to really elephant it up you need a computer
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I was called to help a Geography and Geology student who had to do a subsidiary course in Fortran. I'd never met her before. I obviously did OK as she passed the course.
Very positive outcome: It was an unusual way to meet my future wife. Now married for 42 years and counting.
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But high-school maths to three students.
Even in this set of three, two are fast learners, and one is quite slow.
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Which means the 86 (at the time I'm writing) people who claimed they've never taught coding, nevertheless said how well they did, when they didn't do it.
Truth,
James
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you can't submit unless you answer both questions so you have have to pick something in question 2. There should have been a N/A option but there's not.
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worse, all 86 did not choose the same answer.
But agree with the other poster an N/A option was requried!
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We just hired a couple of recent graduates. One is very sharp and has some experience, the other is just starting.
I'm mentoring both, mainly by being The Wise Old Head and telling war stories. I've never seen where a college education teaches real-world software engineering very well. Also, there are philosophies and favored practices within our group that I explain and provide their justification.
I like teaching. I've done it before, and it's always satisfying when you see the light go on in their heads.
Software Zen: delete this;
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I've given small sessions to help out fellow coders break down design problems. One of my former students now works at Google so I'd say it was an overwhelming success.
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I’ve never taught anyone to code, and that is most excellent. 
Time is the differentiation of eternity devised by man to measure the passage of human events.
- Manly P. Hall
Mark
Just another cog in the wheel
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Did a year of teaching COBOL at my local tech college, as an evening job (1993 I think). (Was working full time during the day too). Generally I enjoyed it, but there were two major problems (which were very specific to the college I was at)
1. Being in the days before video projectors, it involved a lot of writing on the whiteboard. We were supposed to use college-supplied pens, and they were lethal. Absolutely stank and the fumes got to the back of my throat. By the end of the evening I could barely talk and always had a sore throat the next day.
2. The admin seemed incapable of making a payment on time. For every hour I taught, I spent 15 minutes chasing up delayed or incorrect payments, or wrong tax codes, or missing payslips; they were just totally incompetent.
Out of a class of 15, I think a couple dropped out early on, but the rest all got their NVQs. Some students really struggled along the way, a couple consistently cheated, and about 3 were clearly suited to programming and, I hope, made a good career out of it.
Years later, when self-employed, I did a day a month supporting a local private school. The IT teacher had identified one lad who had a real yearning to code, and they were happy for me to do 1-to-1 tutoring over his lunchtime. (I never got a break but meant I could charge for the entire time). He was a natural and went on to start his own software company, developing apps in a niche market and seems to be doing pretty well.
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LOL, that was my experience teaching Java... (1 did not need to be there, 3 did really well, almost half had to retake the class).
But your local college reminded me of an experience I had with a Lady (whose qualifications were being a teacher, and her husband was a programmer). I was a Teenager who had self-learned 4 languages, and MACRO-11 Assembly.
She made me take her BASIC class, although I had 3 types of BASIC under my belt.
In class, one day she used the LOOP Variable, AFTER the loop. Had no idea it could be 1(Increment) value higher than the loop value, and she was checking it for an early exit condition (incorrectly). I raised my hand to tell her she SHOULD NEVER do that, and it's bad form, and this MANUAL mentions it. (I did not own the book. I could not afford IT and the class. LOL. So I borrowed on from someone before the class, and read the entire thing over a weekend and gave it back).
She asked me to show her in the book (I explained I didn't have a copy, and she cut me off, told the class not to listen to me). I borrowed a book from the kid in front of me (who was hesitant b/c of the teacher).
I found the paragraph, just as the class ended, and I went up and showed her the paragraph.
I guess I pissed her off when I asked "didn't you read the book?" And why would you not remember such a critical concept. (Lets just say I learned what on OMBUDSMAN was because of that course. She became hellbent on punishing me in that class).
Wow... Circa 1986
thanks for triggering that memory. It taught me to stand my ground against professors, and when I was teaching, it taught me to be very careful about what I TAUGHT (that I actually KNEW it), and that I would re-read things to be 100% certain...
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everyday is opportunity to drive new developers into your way of thinking, that how the tabs/spaces war will be won, not by us, but by the children.
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Out of 20 or so students that I helped, maybe 5 'got it'...the rest gave up. The ones that gave up were those who constantly showed up with nothing done and nothing tried...not even pseudocode.  It seemed that they simply wanted someone to do their homework for them and help them pass the tests.
In my career, I've only had 2 jr. programmers and an intern that I've trained. 1 of the 2 jrs. went on to bigger and better things, the other I did not care to keep in contact with so not sure. The intern who was being paid by the assignment, never called or asked for help but also never turned in a single line of code. (never earned a dime) He decided that programming was not for him and changed his major to engineering, then decided that wasn't for him. He somehow wound up in cybersecurity working for a major DoD contractor and making 6 figures. 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Yeah, I had a kid in class explain he cannot follow me.
I asked "What was the last chapter you read in the book"?
"I'm Behind" he said.
Yeah, but what was the last chapter you read?
"2"
so, you feel comfortable if I ask you the core questions of what you learned in chapter 2?
"No"
Okay, we are on CHAPTER 6... How do you expect to even BEGIN to process what I am talking about?
The kind that spent hours in the lab, pestering other kids, until they eventually gave him the answers he needed.
Nice guy.
Changed his major, went into physical therapy (I saw him at a Hockey Game, he approached me. Told me "Your class" made me realize I just wasn't into it... He said Physical Therapy, and I told him "I bet you're really good at it, and at connecting with people to meet them where they are, and to get them moving..." He GLOWED when he said "Exactly!"...
I said "that was the natural ability you were using in the labs, to get the homework from others! You just found a more appropriate use for those skills"... He laughed pretty hard (I don't think he knew I knew)... And thanked me again as we went separate ways.
It was nice. My daughter was there. (She was not used to someone addressing me as their Teacher/Professor, since it was a part-time gig).
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kmoorevs wrote: He somehow wound up in cybersecurity working for a major DoD contractor and making 6 figures.
Making sure other people tick all the boxes and submit paperwork to you doesn't require any actual technical skills.
I'm not sure the second person in that sort of role I worked with needed all that much more skill to run HP Fortify on a copy of the source code we sent him.  Excluding false positives from the report we got back might have, but since after the first pass 99% of what we got back was nit-picky code smells not potential problems I was always curious to see what the raw output was.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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When I was a senior in highschool (late 90s), I'd exhausted all the programming options available and had signed up for a C++ course at the local community college. Midway through the term the secretary for the guidance councilors office discovered that I was doing so. She was taking the other session being offered that term (taught by the same person), and wanted me to help her because unlike the COBOL   courses she'd taken previously she was really struggling in this one and was worried that she would fail it and torpedo her plan to get into a better job.
I had no problems with that, school secretary seemed to be as mind numbing and soul sucking as it was probably low paid. But it quickly became clear she wasn't interested in help actually understanding any of the concepts in the course; she just wanted me to do her homework for her. 🤮
NOT!
HAPPENING!
She got really frustrated with me over that. The fact that I'd refused for years to offer my services via any of the schools official tutoring (pronounce "homework doing") programs; despite being willing to help people who actually wanted help learning how to do something during lunch or study hall should've been a hint. (The main thing I did was finding alternate routes to solve algebra problems for math/physics classes when the teachers/books solution didn't click for someone. )
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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This goes back to the "bad old days" of the 1970s. The company I worked for, a government contractor, was busy and the talent pool of available programmers was very shallow. Most college graduates of the day could not write code much beyond "Hello, World." in FORTRAN or C.
There was a female employee in the data center with an Associate Degree from the local community college. I began by teaching her, first with C, then later with assembly language and set her to work doing maintenance programming during lunch. She was very bright and did well. I used my position to assign her to my team as our project archivist. Later in the project, when most of the development was done and my senior team members were starting their own projects or moving on to other leaders projects, I began assigning her development work on a government project. She completed a line item and I had her sign off on it, then I signed as project leader.
The compliance team said that she was, due to her position in the data center, unqualified to sign as a developer, regardless of the fact she did the work and had the requisite minimum degree. Other coworkers, all male, had used this route to move into software development, but HR and management balked at moving her. I refused to sign as developer, forcing a confrontation - with a government audit just days away, they reluctantly moved her. As a junior developer, she had little choice of projects and, as a woman, management was almost openly hostile to her presence.
About a year later, she hired on to a small game developing company a few miles away. That company did not last, but that is another story. I forget which larger game company bought the shell and I lost track of her.
__________________
Lord, grant me the serenity to accept that there are some things I just can’t keep up with, the determination to keep up with the things I must keep up with, and the wisdom to find a good RSS feed from someone who keeps up with what I’d like to, but just don’t have the damn bandwidth to handle right now.
© 2009, Rex Hammock
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Great story & I really appreciate you standing up to help someone along the way.
I've been in IT since 1991 & it's amazing how the industry has changed (and not changed) over those years.
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Right now, I get the greatest joy from my current job teaching/mentoring other developers. I'll drop almost anything and hop on a zoom to help out. I like to not just give the answer, but explain the background on issues and how the code got to where it was. Then I'll often switch to other parts of the code and explain context before coming back to their question. All the time, I ask probing questions that I don't expect them to know the answer to. I try not to ask any question that I don't already know the answer to. Eventually we'll get the answer and I can see their enlightenment as they understand the long answer to what felt like a simple question.
Of course along the way, I check in to make sure they are still interested and have time to continue. If it paid better, I would teach at the college level. Until then, I'll hope they keep bringing in new developers to entertain me
Hogan
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"if paid well" - hmm yes that is a global problem that "teachers" (or mentors, coaches, you name it) - are not the ones getting rich, but with growing age (50+ here), the pure money is by far no longer the most important part on a fulfilling job.
I _do_ teaching for a living for some years now, and yes, while the income went down, my personal satsfaction and happiness grew to never-before-seen heights.
I wouldn't exchange that for any job in my "old" life.
modified 2-Aug-22 0:58am.
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I think teaching is something of a vocation and requires a particular set of skills. Experience tells me I don't have (most of) them.
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But she refuses. I think that she knows she'll never see the light of day again. She is an obsesseser to a fault.
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But the guy I spent the most time mentoring in coding - I taught him when we were teens and I was couch surfing at his place periodically. He went on to move to NYC and become a wealthy and successful software contractor. Maybe that says something.
I put "generally good"
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Teach it. Staying one lesson ahead is a challenge.
>64
Some days the dragon wins. Suck it up.
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And some of the simplest questions are the most complicated to answer...
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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