Lately, I had my very first teaching experience. It was a 24 hours workshop (4 days, 6 hours per day) for five illustration students. My goal was to teach them how to create an online portfolio to showcase their work. The challenges were multiple.
In this article, I’ll be speaking about my own experience, and then share some advices that I consider like useful for a first teaching experience.
Your first audience
As I said, it was my first experience. I never had a chance to previously confront / speak up in front of people as a professional (I took theater lessons, but that’s not the same audience, isn’t it?).
It is always challengy to fight up the stress of this “first time” especially when you are in a (quite) unknown environment.
Choosing the right technique
I remembered the good old days of tables. It was so easy to learn. You know, when we designers were completely unconscious of accessibility, standards. When we didn’t need to pay attention to several browsers, to use hacks, conditional comments, special techniques!
Good old days did I said? No, I didn’t mean it – I’m so glad of the “standards revolution”! Despite the fact it was an easier approach for webdesign-newbies, I just didn’t want to teach anyone an obsolete approach. So I took the challenge to teach them the right way. Which is way more abstract.
I mean, floats? Positioning? Inline/Block elements? Transforming inline to block, block to inline, ugh! Not so easy-to-grasp concepts!
The time factor
24 hours to teach anyone how to create a standards compliant website, from design to coding, is nearly impossible. Nearly! In fact they did it, they learnt in a record time how to create a little website with divs.
Of course you can’t expect their code to validate or be browser-bug-free, or their design to be in a kick-ass Web 2.0 style (that’s where experience comes in).
But being realistic, I had to provide them a tool from which they could then learn on their own.
The new environment
The environment was quite unknown for me. I knew a few teachers from that school (something like 2) and the rest was a big discovery. I had the chance to be well and warmly welcome by most of them, and this allowed me to meet new interesting people.
But this added to the difficulties! Not only was I learning how to teach in an immediate environment, I was also learning to know new persons, new jobs, news points of view.
That, maybe, would look like a simple and natural process, which it was, but the brain was so much sollicitated by all this new situations that I went home, at night, completely tired. I felt very good with myself (positive, I mean!) but just like I had a brainwash 
Getting attention and estimating the knowledge
I had a lot of chance, the students were all eager to learn how to manage this new tool that would allow them to showcase their illustration work. I think the level of attention you get when teaching is really important and could demotivate you if you encouter no interest. This was fortunately not my case!
The knowledge is also something tricky. Again and fortunately, they had some Photoshop knowledge, but they hardly saw one line of code during their life so the approach wasn’t actually the same than teaching to a bunch of geeky informaticians
And here comes the close relationship between attention and knowledge ~ I’m pretty sure someone that really wants to learn is able to grasp quite anything. And this first experience confirmed it.
Technical difficulties
I have the habit of working on PC, with my PC software (i.e. Notepad ++) and I was confronted to a Mac when I arrived. I already worked (several years) on Mac but having to switch softwares, systems (and even networks) was pretty difficult and lead me to situation where I had to ask students “how to”!
Then, the network which wasn’t working correctly, didn’t allow me to share easily the dummy files I had prepared for analysis and experimentations… And also, the Web wasn’t working properly, and as incredible as it can sound, we basically learned how to create a website without having access to the Web!
Recommendations
What I would recommend for one’s first teaching experience:
- Be prepared. I had a “dummy” student that heard my lessons, stopped me when I was telling something too abstract and making suggestions during the whole process. This really helped me a lot! It also confronted me to the need of structure. Creating a website implies so much little bits of knowledge! To teach them all properly you have to give them an order. And the first order you have in mind isn’t always the appropriate one.
- Bring them some “cheat sheets”. Expecting your students to know each important HTML and CSS attribute in only 24 hours isn’t realistic. Bring tools that will help them during the process.
- Be rested! This one is pretty important. If you’re tired, your stated of mind will probably not be encouraging for students to learn from you. If you’re rested and shiny, your will most probably send “good vibrations” for a warmer studying environment! Do not allow everyone to bother you the night before your first day ~ switch your phones and mails off.
- Be consistent. Teach them by using real examples. Or you will quickly face the typical “but you said that…” followed by your answer “yes but that was meant to be as an example, in fact, it’s…” In such a little amount of time, you have to make sure every detail you say has an importance and can be used in a real context. Students will mostly take everything as necessary.
- Be structured. If you switch to a subject from another, to then switch back again to the first one… you will most probably get everyone lost.
- Take time to relax. As soon as you have a break, go outside or have a drink. If you focus on your learning non-stop, you will feel too much pression and this could lead to a burn-out. It is important to oxygen and distract your braincells properly
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- Ensure your tools will function correctly in your new environment. The best thing would be to prepare the classroom previous to the arrival of the students (which isn’t always possible). If you can, test the projections, the Internet connexion, your new softwares, the network… Those are really things that can make you loose a lot of time (and credibility, which is important to get attention).
