This revision is closer to what I wish I said, although I am sure that it is less true to what I actually told people while on stage.

gistfile1.txt

How not to be scary (when introducing programming)

A transcribed lightning talk given by Lyla Fischer at the PyCon 2013 Education Summit


What are people scared of?  The main thing that people are scared of is that
they don't belong.  The rest of my talk is mainly going to center on this one
point.
 
I'm going to let you take 15 seconds to think of stereotypes of programmers.  If
you have a new programmer walking into a meetup or user group, what kind of programmer do
they think that they will have to be?
 
<pause>
 
If I were a good teacher and had more time, the question I just asked would have been a 
group discussion and I would have waited for somebody to say
that this new programmer thinks that they have to be a genius.  That's one of the biggest 
stereotypes that you as a meetup leader has to overcome. There are a lot of other 
stereotypes that especially affect how minorities feel themselves fitting into a programming
environment, but the most important of these stereotypes is a fear of not being smart enough.  
There is this expectation that you have to be super duper smart, and many newbies are just 
trying as hard as they can not to break the machine.
 
First off, I want to give a quick warning about competitions. There, the biggest fear is of coming in
last, or almost last. If you have 60% of the folks in your room worrying that they are the 
stupidest person in the room, and that everyone else is going to find out, that is no good. 
So, stay away from competitions.
 
More commonly, folks are afraid of asking stupid questions.  There are lots
of stupid questions, especially for newbies talking to an experienced programmer.
I'm not talking about mistaking CD trays for cupholders here - most people have used computers and GUIs.
I'm talking about fundamental things like how to navigate a file system, what a terminal is, 
or what a text file is.  These are the questions that make some experienced programmers shake their head and sigh.  
The moment you let that kind of expression onto your face is the moment that you lose your audience.  That is the
moment when you confirm student fears that they're stupid.
 
One of the ways you (as a teacher) can know you're on the right track is if your students ask "stupid"
questions.  You can pat yourself on the back.  If students feel safe asking you what
a terminal is, then you've succeeded in creating a space where they feel comfortable 
exposing what they don't know. You should consider a stupid question one of the greatest triumphs of your teaching experience!
 
Another thing to stay on watch for is the blank stare.  The blank stare is someone 
implicitly saying with their face: "I don't want to reveal what I'm thinking about". 
Most of the time, that means "I don't know." or "I don't care."
Occasionally, it's "I did this 5 years ago and am too smart for this." but
that's really rare in practice. If your students DON'T feel comfortable 
showing confusion on their face, then you have a problem, and you should pause to address it. 
 
Teachers should also be scared of the leading question. A lot of
instructors try to get feedback from students by getting students to say something
that is true. That is generally a good strategy, but if the answer is ridiculously 
obvious by the way you ask it, you won't
get real information about whether the students understand what's going on.  If
you ask them, "Should I put this in a text file?" That's a leading question with
a yes or no answer, and it's pretty clear that what you're looking for is a
"yes."
 
Making sure that students don't feel stupid is a very intuitive skill.  
It's about reading faces.  It's about thinking
about what kind of questions to ask in order to get good facial expressions and verbal
feedback.  The best kind of situation is one in which students are comfortable
asking questions.  But most importantly - don't ever sigh at a question, because that is going to
shut everything down and you will lose your students forever.