Toy Problem Solution Lecturing!!

You get to be an instructor at the most amazing educational institution in the world.

Agenda

• Key Takeaways
  • Why are they going to be better engineers for having listened to this lecture?
• Enthusiasm
• Empathy
  • Understand the common failure patterns
• Thumbs Check. All the time. 
• Questions
  • Put the question back on the asker
  • Take the pulse of the room and defer 'til later
• ​Logistics
  • ​Make sure the code works
  • Make the decks better

Questions

• Off by one errors- step through the code. can be a good excuse to show exactly what the code is doing. 
  • If that doesn't immediately solve it, defer to fireside
• Scribely questions- if it's an important JS or CS concept, discuss. Otherwise, fireside
• Time Complexity- Know it. If you're not great at it now, learn it. You'll be better for it, and so will your students. 
• Don't be afraid to say "I don't know". Oftentimes lead with that "I'm not an expert in this area, but we're going to show you a little regex."
• Don't let students assist your lectures

Questions 2

• It's super important that you make it ok and good to ask questions. 
• Don't get defensive. The students will often ask aggressive sounding questions. Rise above it. Defer to fireside. 
• If you don't know the answer, say so, and invite them to come figure it out with you fireside. 
• Step out from behind the podium and get closer to the students when they're asking questions. 

Movement/Punctuation

• Punctuate your lectures with movement. 
• Pause intentionally.
• Step out from the podium on the important slides. 
• Tell the students when you're going to be lingering on something. 
• Tell the students when you'll be going off on a side adventure, and why that adventure is worthwhile. 
• Prep the students with things that will be coming up later in the deck. 
• Change your voice. Change your intonation. Keep yourself excited and engaged. 
• Purposefully pull yourself back into the presentation. If you feel yourself flagging, do something that gets you interested or excited again. 

Enthusiasm

• Your students are non-caffeinated, potentially hungover, distracted, and half of them haven't done the problem. 
• Spend extra effort drawing them in. 
• Tie things into larger CS concepts- key takeaways are perfect for this. make it useful in a larger scope than just this particular solution. 
• Be energetic! Even if the students don't respond, they still appreciate it. Trust me. 
• Wear your energetic, fun, colorful clothing. 
• Have your "thing". Give students something predictable to look forward to about having you as a lecturer
• Add gifs

What to call yourself

• You're an:
• Instructor
• Teacher
• Leader
• Algorithms Master
• Lecturer
• Speaker
• Any combination of the above
  • I prefer Algorithms Lecturer

Imposter Syndrome

• You were intentionally selected to be a part of HR (trust me, working in admissions, this is a MUCH higher bar than you understand).
• You were intentionally selected to be an HiR
• You were intentionally selected to be a Toy Problem Lecturer, by people who know you well and have studied your performance in WAY more depth than you currently know about for 3 months. 
• You are meant to be here. 

Pair Preparation

• Discuss the deck with the other presenter. Pair on it. 
• Questions to ask students
• Potential questions the students are likely to ask
• Key Takeaway- what do each of you see as the Key concept from this lecture?
• Bugs and wording updates- this makes sure you're both on board
• Updated visualizations/slide deck- ricochet ideas off of each other and accelerate the rate of change
• NEVER make a last-minute change to the master deck. Always fork and make the emergency changes there. 
• Alert your pair to any changes you make after they've reviewed it
•  

Feedback

• YES!!!
• You're all going to do great, but you each have different enough strengths that you can make each other remarkably better. 
• Compare notes with your pair after the lecture
• Come in early to give each other feedback once a week
• Ask Josh for feedback. 
• Have prep teaching sessions with Marcus. 
• If you have a few close friends in the audience, ask them. "I think that went pretty well, but what could I do to make it even better next time?"
• "What could I have explained better?"

Thumbs

• Always model a neutral thumb. Give them explicit instructions for what each thumb means. Ask them to show their confidence they can explain it. 
• Make everyone give you thumbs. 
• Excitedly ask people with neutral thumbs to turn that confusion into a question. Do this with enthusiasm and positivity. Make their question asking a good thing, not a scary/intimidating one. 
•  

Questions

• Last person to raise their mic says what the day's problem was
• Thumbs on people's confidence on the problem/ did they do it?
• At the end of each major section of code, pause and ask for open-ended questions
• At the end, pause and ask for open-ended questions before they embark on today's toy problem. 

Visualizations

• These slides need more. 
• Sometimes the Key Takeaway is just showing something they know, but visualizing it in a really compelling way. 
• If you have any inclination for it, adding more visuals to this deck would be an amazing legacy to leave. 

Maths

• You're scheduled for 5 hours a week
• You're lecturing 2.5 times per week
• Take it on as a personal challenge to make a substantial improvement to at least one deck per week. 
• This is one of your first ways of giving back to this amazing HR community you're clearly choosing to be a part of. 

This role is amazing

• You're being given an amazing opportunity- you get to transition students' mental states in ways much more pervasive than any single library will ever matter to them
• You're the chosen guardian of their mornings- you set the tone for how their day starts
• You get to show them the light. You get to show them the right and beautiful ways of doing things. 
• Toy Problems have more of an impact on the job search than any other single thing HR teaches (ok, maybe other than the resume). 

Fill it with Gratitude