by zandert on 4/23/23, 7:14 AM with 146 comments
by neilv on 4/23/23, 1:22 PM
First, I had great instructors at Portland Community College.
Also, in addition to what I learned there, an area company (Tektronix spinoff) happened to put a job post there for a co-op student, and it turned out to be a great company, doing big things, which launched my career.
After later working and then going to fancy-pants schools, one day a professor dissed community colleges to me. I thought the professor was wrong and out of line, so I talked constructively with them about that. But I still felt bad, and didn't need the stigma in those particular circles, so I removed community college from my Web CV.
When I was finally making a LinkedIn, I found one of my instructors from community college on there, and wrote them a note, thanking them, and telling them how helpful and important their teaching had been to me.
Maybe the next day, I realized I'd left community college off my LinkedIn, and the instructor might've seen that. So I added it back on, and have kept it on.
Community college is for people who want to better themselves, and, for whatever reason (I suspect usually involving socioeconomic circumstances) they aren't (yet?) at a more expensive college or university.
When I'm hiring, I see a lot of MIT/Stanford/Ivy on resumes, but I also pay as much attention to resumes from people who went to other schools, or who took some other path through their circumstances.
by spicyusername on 4/23/23, 11:59 AM
The community colleges in my area require a surprising amount of prerequisites and pay _dismally_. Even with 15 years of industry experience, I'd need at least a year or two of additional schooling (while not being paid) to earn a paltry few hundred dollars per credit hour per semester while teaching.
Hard sell to not get paid for a few years to then take a 75-90% pay cut.
by ignoramous on 4/23/23, 1:19 PM
It took 4 to 6 hours of prep to deliver a one hour class. Preparing from existing course materials available online or from YouTube and Wikipedia was the fastest as opposed to going through the text books.
I found it very hard to know when to go fast and when to go slow, what to skip and what to include. The feedback coming through wasn't real-time. I kept surprise open-notes tests to gauge where the class was lacking.
Students have a very short attention span. It is hard to keep them engaged throughout the period. I always start by summarising topics from the previous class. I also spoke to them multiple times and at length about concentration, but I guess the length was also a problem.
I believe some students are vehemently visual learners and prefer PPTs and videos. I shared links I thought were high quality with them via a Google doc and updated them every week.
Everyone used ChatGPT for assignments and some used it for preparing for exams.
It was jarring to see some students be in a perennial state of distraction (and be slave to their smartphones).
After the semester ended, with the money I earned taking the class (it wasn't much at all), I bought every student one among Pragmatic Programmer, Algorithms to Live By, Deep Work, Outliers, How Google Works, Why We Sleep. In the hope that it inculcates in them the habit reading books to progress in their careers.
by fn-mote on 4/23/23, 12:51 PM
You are doing something new, learning to communicate, potentially even learning some new material or a new perspective on something you know. At the very least, you get inspiration to create new materials (for teaching).
This experience is not great for your students. You are being trained on the job. They are looking for training. You are learning from the mistakes you make teaching them.
This isn't necessarily horrible. You teaching the class could still be better than the next best alternative. But the fact that CC (in the US, in STEM, IME) are not paying enough for this to be a viable career means that you will never stay long enough to be an experienced teacher who has figured out a solid approach to teaching the classes and students that you teach.
by 2b3a51 on 4/23/23, 12:07 PM
I thought the page covered most things carefully and I suspect the students had a good experience.
In the UK sessionally paid teaching can be just one class a week as an extra thing. There will be the dbs check and if you want to do this as a long term thing you will need to take a basic teaching qualification.
Planning a course:
Write down a series of sentences saying what the student should be able to do after the course. In the UK we call these 'learning outcomes'[1]. For something like the OA's example Introduction to HTML, CSS and Javascript you will end up with quite a few!
Those learning outcomes will help you to devise a series of activities, see below. The outcomes can also help you to devise an assessment if the college requires that. Finally you can write a few sentences explaining what skills students should have to benefit from the course.
Estimating time in class:
Devise some practical activities for your students to complete tied closely to the learning outcomes (does not have to be 1 to 1 mapping). Time yourself working through the activities - line by line. Multiply that by 6 or something like that. OA has worked out that instructions need to be fairly full.
Then add time for the 'whole group' explanations (the bit where you stand up and explain stuff).
IT classes:
Your learning outcomes and activities will help you to list all the facilities you need. As OA found out Colleges can have quite locked down systems. Might be an idea to talk to technical support in the College through your contact there while planning.
[1] http://www.bristol.ac.uk/academic-quality/approve/approvalgu...
Above is just one I found doing a quick search. Seems pretty standard if wordy.
by photochemsyn on 4/23/23, 2:10 PM
https://www.communitycollegereview.com/blog/california-commu...
A main issue, at least in the USA, is that college is extremely expensive so smart students who don't want massive debt or who can't tap parental wealth can do two years of work at a community college (with smaller classes) before transferring to a four-year school, saving tens of thousands of dollars along the way. Some community colleges have reoriented around this goal to attract students, but the tradeoff is that continuing education for adults and other vocational programs often get cut.
Another problem is that public high schools do such an atrocious job at instruction that community colleges have to pick up the slack, so you have schools teaching basic algebra and simple reading/writing skills (i.e. 9th grade level etc.) to young adults whose primary education was a disaster. It's a pretty sad state of affairs, at least in the USA.
Note that teaching at a CC tends to require at least a Master's degreee in the field, and of course if you have large student loans the pay is to low to make any headway in paying them down. Incidentally, if you are planning to teach, LLMs have huge potential for new teachers to design a course with modern material. Of course grading students is going to be an issue and in-class testing is the only plausible alternative as LLMs can also write code and solve problems for students.
by jason-phillips on 4/23/23, 10:56 AM
Like this person, it helped hone my skills communicating technical ideas to non-technical people. Most importantly, it helped me understand others' limitations and abilities of mine I had taken for granted. As a result, I learned patience and grace, that sometimes it's better to show someone while doing it yourself, rather than expecting them to master it.
I scheduled an AI class in the library this summer, because I think it's important. We'll see.
by jasoneckert on 4/23/23, 4:30 PM
25 years ago, I knew I wanted to build great teaching skills and genuinely make a difference in people's lives. But after spending almost a decade in the university space (and teaching a few courses), I realized that my abilities would be better spent teaching job-focused IT and programming courses at community college for two main reasons:
1) University students often come from privileged homes and/or have more supports while attending school, which makes my role as teacher less valuable to their development, and
2) Most community college students are focused on landing a job at the end of their program, and I felt I would make a bigger impact working with this drive in the classroom, while keeping current with the industry.
I should also note that it's very important to work in the industry while teaching for personal and academic development. I've taken on 1-2 extracurricular projects each year since 1998 that were outside of my comfort zone, and I don't think I would have taught for as long as I did if I didn't do this.
by culopatin on 4/23/23, 1:34 PM
They wanted someone with a PhD and it paid 38k… non starter. The kind of PhD that’s willing to take that in a field like computer science is a very unique kind of person that doesn’t have better opportunities for whatever reason.
by tristor on 4/23/23, 2:38 PM
I’ve guest lectured twice and mentored 4 students met this way in their tech careers. Each class had 40-50 students in it but only one or two truly engaged with the material. Those engaged students will almost certainly have fantastic careers and are people you want in your network.
by ssttoo on 4/23/23, 11:46 AM
May be just my CC experience of study field (music) combined with locale (talent-attracting city of Los Angeles) but I hear one needs to be a PhD these days to compete for a CC professor spot.
by CrampusDestrus on 4/23/23, 11:38 AM
I would have loved helping people learn by teaching a few classes after graduating, but would any company have hired me after seeing that's the only thing I did in those years?
I love helping people and making the world better, and if I could I would switch between teaching at college and working in the industry every few years, but unfortunately it's not really possible
by thathndude on 4/23/23, 11:49 AM
The students were great. But the administration of the school left a lot to be desired.
by 6stringmerc on 4/23/23, 1:25 PM
You enjoy poverty wages and difficult co-workers. Also getting sick from students a lot. Also debates about in-person or online platforms.
Source: Ex-wife is a tenured community college professor involved in governance as well
by ZachSaucier on 4/23/23, 12:51 PM
by 23B1 on 4/23/23, 10:36 AM
I think HR (and frankly PR) departments would be very smart to connect themselves with schools in their area for tutoring or teaching at any level.
by jgrowl on 4/23/23, 3:07 PM
You get what you put into it no matter where you go.
by summerflowers on 4/25/23, 10:03 AM
1. it's not easy 2. if you're a subject expert then your language and communication skills are probably awful and full of jargon 3. planning is very important 4. proper teaching means actually checking that your students are learning 5. teaching a subject you are expert in actually teaches you things too
Well done.
If you do another blog on this later that would be interesting.
PS I'm not a techie, I'm in teacher training.
by ModernMech on 4/23/23, 1:31 PM
by MontagFTB on 4/23/23, 3:30 PM
by AlbertCory on 4/23/23, 4:58 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re2Oh4rxN6w&list=PL3F463A677...
This teacher knew his stuff. He read us the poem "The Eensy-Weensy Spider" and when everyone laughed, he said, more or less, "If any of you can write a script half this good, you'll be a success."
It was on Super-8. "Editing" consisted of cutting the film and taping it together, and then punching sprocket holes in the tape.
by aaabre2476 on 4/23/23, 7:06 PM
by gravypod on 4/23/23, 1:18 PM
by lowken on 4/23/23, 4:43 PM
I don’t put Palm Beach Community College on my resume but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the community college path to a young person.
by k__ on 4/23/23, 1:14 PM
It was a nice experience, but payed really badly.
by jacooper on 4/23/23, 3:54 PM
They allow students to teach? Bachelor students?
by ZunarJ5 on 4/23/23, 11:10 AM
by ankaAr on 4/23/23, 1:22 PM
Was one of my best experiences, and yes, the payment was very low, but i was teaching.., maybe 10 hours a week.
by tibbon on 4/23/23, 1:44 PM
by westurner on 4/23/23, 3:28 PM
To learn, teach.
by gonzalonunez on 4/24/23, 6:52 PM
by than3 on 4/24/23, 5:40 AM
I've personal experience in an engineering program, where this was common practice in the 3-class core physics courses. 3 question-20step/q test where each subsequent question is dependent on the answer to the previous question. This is the causality spiral of doom, where you either get it perfect, or you don't pass, but you have to get it perfect 6 times in a row to pass the class. By the time you take the first test, you can't get a refund, and if the answer doesn't match perfectly with Pearson or Canvas's material, good luck you just wasted $10-15,000 in living expenses during the time you tried. Try again. and again. and maybe by time 8 or 10 you decide its just not a program for you anymore, and you run into the same issue with the supposedly easier classes in the business program, or drop out completely.
Some professors take it a step further by adjusting the rounding strategy between those questions instead of following the same significant digits. Its deceitful lying meant to sell you a pipe-dream which you'll never be able to complete unless you get lucky, and that's just one example. I've almost 15 years worth of examples, in a broad geographic area.
Its one of the most egregious deceitful lies we are told as people entering college. Education is only an investment when you can get something back from that investment. If you just need that paper because anyone without it is not qualified, then it doesn't matter what you know (as many professionals I've met have demonstrated they lacked crucial skills and had no inclination to fix their shortfalls).
Not even close to meritocracy, I've passed and completed up through DiffEQ and Linear Algebra math wise which require Calculus 3 as a pre-requisite. No issues with math, but I have yet to pass a Mechanics of Solid course because of structure. Its structured to fail people. Eventually people give up trying to be engineers and try business only to find the same thing in the economic's courses. Its such corrupt deceitful bad behavior, and impacts those who have to pay their own way through more than others.
I had an online econ class this past semester which had all the same hallmarks, worse, the professor was collecting a paycheck, and instead of lecturing simply referred us to Khan Academy movie links and Pearson's Autograder (which routinely failed on correct answers, and no exceptions were being made regardless, i.e. its the student not the professor or pearson were in the wrong).
Any other industry doing these same business practices would be sued or shut down for outright fraud and unfair and deceptive business practices. Because its state funded its somehow exempt from all those same rules. Also the only path to correct is escalating to the chair/dean/trustees rarely ever has any action taken. The people responsible for advocating are the same people that have let this continue for decades.
They don't track metrics that would quickly show problems so they can fix them. My local colleges say they don't track how many students in each class have taken the same class or professor before and failed, and the graduation rates as we all know are abyssal.