This is a quote I always proudly stood by in my years of teaching as a profession. I truly believe there is no other job in the world which can change the world more and I loved to see the difference I would help bring about in my students. If it wasn’t for the very low pay, long hours and uncertainty over the summers, I’d probably still be teaching, but in 2018 I decided I was ready for a change and it was time to invest in myself, ****accept uncertainty and evolve my thinking. I was to be a student again, at the Le Wagon nine week web development bootcamp!
I was equally apprehensive and excited about trying something so utterly different to everything I had known before, logical thinking, computing, loops!....All of it was alien to me, but if teaching had taught me anything, it was that learning is more than just absorbing material, it is accommodating uncertainty and acquiring understanding. And I was ready for it!
As a teacher it felt amazing to be a student again, I sat in the front row during every lecture and put my hand up to ask as many questions as my ever patient and amazing teachers would gladly answer, assisting in my discoveries. And oh, how many discoveries I was making! Variables, methods, conditionals, software programs with databases, designs to align on a page, data to retrieve from the internet... It felt incredibly powerful to be on my own journey of discovery and although intensely difficult, I was becoming a stronger person everyday, bettering myself in finding new ways of thinking and new skills.
There is nothing more rewarding than coming up with solutions to problems in code, and knowing you’ve done it all using your own brain! Programming is the most fulfilling career, in which you never stop learning and never stop being humble. Code humbles you but makes you a better person!
I would recommend coding to anyone, but especially to people in such different professions as teaching, the skills of patience, resilience and the ability to try things in a different way will be completely transferrable to new and unbeknownst before enemies: ‘bugs’! Crushing bugs will become your new victories, just as crushing difficult questions from students had.
This summer as you think what to do with the time you have off in between teaching, why not gift yourself a new life and try coding? Who knows, you might end up loving it and never looking back, like me! Just as you used to change the world by teaching others, you can change your own world by learning to code.
Change your life, learn to code. Our next Web Development bootcamps are starting this summer July 11th. You can do this and we are waiting for you, with all the motivation and advice at the ready.
Irina Popa, developer, teacher, always a learner.
