This is where we carry out the plan from the first step. This can take a lot of different forms depending on where the student is and what they need.
This is a common type of meeting when the student is stuck on something they’ve been working on and are trying to figure out how to get things working again. This is a great opportunity to pair program on debugging skills, walking through the problem solving steps together. Sometimes as a mentor you’ll know what the problem is right away, and sometimes you’ll be just as stumped as the student, but either way walking through a debugging process is very helpful. The process might look like this:
- Have them describe their understanding of the problem and what they’ve tried so far to resolve it.
- Confirm the problem together and have them walk through recreating it slowly to confirm that what they think is the problem is actually the problem (it often isn’t).
- Help them come up with some hypotheses for what might be causing the problem. If they’re unsure, ask them questions about the code, like “What does this variable mean?” or “What does this function do?”
- Pair program on testing the hypotheses and then coming up with more as the understanding of the problem is refined. Lead with “How might we...?” questions.
- Sometimes the problem becomes 100% clear, they know exactly why it's not working but still have no clue how to fix it. This is when we can demonstrate good Googling skills for researching other people's solutions to similar problems, or do a demo of the concept they need in the project or in a side JSBin or Repl. Sometimes demonstration is necessary.
- When the problem is resolved, review what you did. We thought it was this, tested it that way, learned this. Then tested this, etc.
This tends to happen when the student has just learned a lot of new concepts or a new tool for the first time and they have a long list of questions to ask. In this situation I answer the questions as well as I can and try various explanations until something sticks. Sometimes it’s helpful to improvise a small exercise and turn it into pair programming. Sometimes it’s helpful to do a demo in a JSBin or whatever tool fits the job to review a tricky concept like CSS positioning or the fundamentals of Git, stopping along the way for clarifying questions.
A career chat meeting tends to come up after the student has completed a big career prep checkpoint or if they recently had a career related event like a developer meetup or an informational interview. Similar to the Q & A meeting, I try to answer their questions as best I can, and give what advice I can from my personal experiences. I also try to help them clarify where their interests, skills, and practical life needs overlap and how that affects what kind of jobs they might look for. I’ll also help them make a plan for the next step in their career development if it makes sense at that point.
This is rare, but every once in a while a student isn’t stuck, doesn’t have any questions, and is doing just fine, so it’s not clear what the best use of the meeting time would be. In this situation I look ahead at what's coming up and if there's anything particularly challenging I talk through it a little bit and give them a heads up about how and why it's tricky. Or I take the chance to go off-roading, introduce them to something related to what they just learned that isn't on the main curriculum content. Another option is to do an extra career prep discussion or introduce them to code-based things related to their interests. For example, if they're into music, I'll show them the music showcase on GitHub and we might play with a music open source tool for a while.
At the end of the meeting, it's very helpful to make a plan together for what they’ll be working on until the next meeting. Even with the roadmap, weekly goals, and pacing, it can be helpful to talk about what checkpoint they can realistically get to between meetings so they have a goal in their head when they sit down to work. Then it’s time to wrap up, bring up any last minute tips or reminders, and remind them that they can send you a message with questions any time.