Chapter 6
Teaching

One of the most difficult disciplines to master, in any field, is teaching. There are plenty of experts in the world but far fewer expert teachers.

Teaching isn’t just regurgitating what we know. It’s an art that requires us to step outside of our own heads and into the mind of someone who’s learning something new. Simply knowing something is just one ingredient in the recipe for a successful teacher.

Too often, we expect someone with great knowledge to be an equally great teacher. But those qualities don’t always come together. Isiah Thomas was a Hall of Fame point guard in the NBA. He was a 12-time NBA all-star and led the Detroit Pistons to two NBA World Championships as a player. Yet, as a head coach, he had a pedestrian record of 187 wins and 223 losses. Sometimes people with great knowledge and skill can’t transfer those same traits to the people they’re trying to mentor.

Teaching programming concepts to a relative newbie is even that much harder. There are no obvious indicators, like a win-loss record, to determine whether our instructions are getting through to our students.

For us, the road from a problem to a solution can be so complex that it’s hard to even describe how we got to the final approach. But being able to do so is critical; it’s the best way we can cultivate a future generation of passionate programmers.

In this chapter, we’ll discuss both common behaviors to avoid and how to help others grasp all the complex knowledge we have in our heads.