It’s been only half a year since I started teaching Pyleap coding to seven and eighth graders. I am on a journey as a teacher who is also learning coding along with the students.
As I introduced the terms “coding” and “programming language” followed by a list of career opportunities in the beginning of the academic year, I could hear whispers of excitement and gleam in their eyes. When asked about the career options they would love to take, many shouted “Ethical Hacker”. I learnt how these young minds fancied the term “hacker” so much. “Let’s take a very small step for now”, I had to bring their hopes down.
Python has only been a giant snake to them until they watched Van Rossum speak about a language he developed and how he ended up giving this very name.The next quick survey was about how many of them liked drawing and almost everyone raised their hand. I could then explain about Pyleap and how this module was going to let them code and draw.
The real struggle began when students couldn’t understand the coordinate system. I had to amplify how x and y are lovers and they must be together every time. When they were confused about which value comes first, I had them connect to the alphabetical order of x and y. Particularly when students couldn’t locate x-axis and y-axis, I wondered if a year of proper learning they missed started taking strolls. However, they have been catching up on it as they drew shapes and arts repeatedly.
Students were clearly frustrated to see how case sensitive Pyleap was. The simplest mistake of missing out a comma gave them all the chills. Proper indentation of certain lines of code was also quite a challenge for them. Coding in Pyleap has definitely made them sharp-eyed sapiens, if not more.
Weeks long coding workshop at Gelephu in the beginning last year did not prepare me as much as the online refresher course in October last year did. This refresher training conducted through Google Classroom has had my confidence spike up. Despite having no internet connection in the school lab, I could pull up a successful Pyleap offline installation. This was already a milestone achievement for me, for someone who felt so handicapped initially. This very incident had me choosing online-mode training over any offline methods ever since. I keep sharing to my students and even colleagues about how connected I felt to the trainers. It was as if the trainer was talking only to me, as if I had the trainer all for myself. So, I think people who keep preferring face-to-face meet ups and workshops should really give another try especially in this pandemic era.
Being introduced to a new coding platform recently, I very much welcome this shift in curriculum though it was a quick one. When I had to copy a bunch of audios and images into every computer so that my students can use them in their programs, when I had to reinstall Pyleap, an updated version, into every computer so that the audio and text inserting methods work, I realized how rigid Pyleap was. Things were way easier even with Scratch coding. CodeMonkey seems to have come to the rescue of this worn-out teacher eventually. A full-on package of an exciting new coding platform and a well-equipped computer lab is already on its way and I can’t stop getting dreamy-eyed.
As I walk this journey of teaching coding to the Gen Zs, I hope I learn as much as they do. I hope I ignite a coder soul. Lastly, I offer my deepest commitments to always work towards successful implementation of coding education in Bhutanese schools.
