Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
33 lines (19 loc) · 2.67 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

33 lines (19 loc) · 2.67 KB
Raw

Mentor Wiki

All levels

Imposter Syndrome

Learners and veterans developers alike can suffer from this thing called "Imposter Syndrome". In summary, it's when you feel like you are incapable of doing this thing that everyone around you expects you to be able to do. It happens to everyone at some point. Here are some tip to help your learner deal with this demotivating feeling:

  • Tell them about your own experience with this
  • Talk to them about the huge value of failure on learning. It's a good thing.

The Problem is Too Big

The same thing happens to people who try to climb a mountain. When standing at the foot of the mountain and looking up, the goal seems so far away that it's impossible. Learning to code might feel this way. Here are some tips to help your learned overcome this:

  • Help them focus on only the next thing. We have divided everything up into "bite sized" pieces for specifically this reason.
  • Call the learner's attention to the things they have already accomplished. This is especially cool when you can remind them how little they knew about coding before starting, and now they can actually create web pages.

Confused By Their Own Code

  • Remember that "helping" is not "doing it for them". Real helping is to see the problem they are experiencing and help them to see it the way you see it, sharing with them your expertise and intuition.
  • Don't let them feel stupid. Help them to see their mistake in a way that says, "hey, this mistake could have happened to anyone. It probably happened to me yesterday." Putting the learner at ease so that he/she has a clear mind to keep going.
  • Help them to feel comfortable with failure to the point that they don't mind reaching out to you or the mentor chat even 15 minutes into being stuck.

Level 1

Project

Tips:

  • The first requirement is to describe the project the learner will work on and estimate the time they think it will take. Don't help them too much with the estimate. One of the cool things that happens is that, inevitably their estimate will be wrong, and the evaluator will have a nice teachable moment to help the learner to see their error in the estimate and start the process of maturing that aspect of themselves.
  • The learner might think his/her project selection is too simple, but you could encourage them to do a simple project anyway. The magic there is that they will learn a LOT about building an app even if it's simple. For example, no matter how large or complex an app, the set up and bootstrapping of the app is going to be the same. Same thing with deployment. the point of Project 1 is not to make a complex app, but to prove the learner can build and deploy a working set of functionality.