If you have been following along…you know that this past May I was offered the chance to not teach for the month and learn a new skill. Not just for myself but for the betterment of my team. So I chose Java. As I have been teaching Web Development or Python and already know MERN that was the only part of the courses my team teaches that I could offer no help on. So it make the most sense. For the 4 weeks of May I was welcomed into one of my fellow instructors class as a student and for those 4 weeks, I did my best to learn Java. For those 4 weeks I felt like a failure. I could see some studens picking it up and others strugling along side of me, but knowing that I am gonig to need to know this well enough to teach it I felt I should be among though who were picking it up. Then June hit. And I was back at the grind teaching my own class. Which ment that I was on my own for the remaining 4 weeks of material I was not going to be able to attend those live lectures. It also ment that I needed to learn some of the harder parts on my own and well enough to my self pass an exam. Although taking the exam or not isn’t something that would keep me from teaching the course, it certainly does look better if I not only took the exam but did well.
This afternoon after about an hour of procrastination I hit the button and started the exam. I had a working login and registration ready to go, I took logical steps on how I went from nothing to something. with in 2.5 hours I had a full CRUD website. I did it. I at least at this point should be getting the Red belt. See we grade on belt levels. Orange means you passed with over 8/10 but you took over 5 (but less than 24) to get to full CRUD. Red belt is full CRUD passing with over 8/10 as well but in less than 5 hours. But the belt I wanted and feel as an instructor would look better? Thats the black belter. That means that the bonus parts, deploying the site to the internet are added on to the Red belt requirements. 2 hours after reaching what I feel will be a Red belt grade I was still working on it. I had nearly everything working. I am sure that if I had had just 20 more min I could have gotten the last stupid error fixed. But I at least wanted that Red belt. So I commented out the parts of my code that were erroring out my application bringing it back to working with full CRUD operations again and turned it in with 5 min to spare before my 5 hours were up.
Sure I am disapointed in myself, but I have realized something else in the hours that have passed. I have gained a whole new perspective on not just what our students go through for the exam but how much I missed by not going to those live lectures for the last part of the material that I needed for that exam. I have trully gained a whole new understanding that I can now pass on to my collegues and to our students.
Do I think that since I didn’t Black Belt the exam I NEED to take another one or wait before I can teach the course? Nope. I know I passed (ok pretty sure I know) and I know that because of my struggles I will be that much better a teacher for it both in that language and others.