Be a great teacher for the greater good

If you’re a developer you know you have plenty of resources available to you: books, online courses, stack overflow! But do we have as many good teachers available to us?

When self-learning is king and self-taught success stories plentiful, are there too many excuses available for making time to be a teacher let alone a good one?

As a junior dev I’m concerned about the ratio of junior to senior. About the availability of teachers around me. And I hear them shout from the crowd “there’s plenty of teachers! You just need to reach out!” And maybe I could go back to my laptop, and some more hours of frustration and insecurity that I’m just not cut out to be a developer, but I know I’m not alone in feeling like this. If all that happens is that I find out I’ve just been looking in the wrong places, I’ll be delighted! If not, at the very least I hope to inspire others to be try to be better teachers for those around them and themselves. (I’m no perfect pupil, but that’s a talk for someone else to give, and I’d love to hear it!)

I want to share some of the skills and qualities I think make for not just good but great teachers. Things I have seen in the many great teachers I have had over the years and qualities I try to demonstrate when I teach; from children to my own peers. Qualities like patience and generosity of time. The ability to know when someone needs help.

And to finish on an almighty cliche and sum up why I feel the need to share this talk, here is a quote I randomly found on Google: “The most valuable resource that teachers have is eachother. Without collaboration our growth is limited to our own perspectives” - Robert John Meehan