Jeff Casimir talks with Dave Rael about education, feedback, software and people, and fortunate circumstances
Stretching back to 2005, Jeff has more experience teaching Ruby and Rails than anyone in the world. Starting his education career with Teach for America in 2003, he’s taught middle school and high school, co-founded a middle school, and created Jumpstart Lab in 2009, Hungry Academy in 2012, and gSchool in 2013. Along the way he’s taught thousands of developers, taken nearly a hundred people from “no experience” to professional, and created over a thousand pages of instructional content. As the Executive Director of Turing School, Jeff designs the overarching instructional program, coordinates the instructional team, connects students with the community, directs the hiring process, and teaches full-group sessions.
Chapters:
1:18 - Dave introduces the show and Jeff Casimir3:19 - Origins of Turing School and stops on the path with creating other education opportunities5:03 - Why Turing is different than other coding schools and bootcamps8:09 - Characteristics of excellent software education and what it has in common with excellent software creation11:10 - The mix of education and software development expertise in the instructors at Turing School12:58 - Educational options and the danger of shallow learning resources17:44 - Jeff's path to education21:36 - Comparing teaching and programming and the emotional load of teaching25:19 - The collaborative nature of programming28:19 - Jeff on teaching computer science and how he engaged students37:40 - Jeff's story of failure - acting according to fear, avoiding uncomfortable parts of the business of creating a school, and agreeing to a contact in haste42:56 - The good fortune of being a programmer in an advantageous market44:47 - Jeff's book recommendations47:21 - Jeff's top 3 tips for delivering more value
Resources:
Turing School of Software and Design
Kathleen Dollard on Developer On Fire
Derek Comartin
Derek Comartin on Developer On Fire
Teach For America
Ari Meisel on Developer On Fire
Jeff's book recommendation:
Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity - David Allen
How to Win Friends & Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Jeff's top 3 tips for delivering more value:
Figure out what people really want, not what they say they want or think they want
Seek rapid feedback
People are a more fun, rewarding, and difficult problem than software - build them up, the impact will last a long time