First week done

I just finished my first week of my new job. This is through a group called Coding With Kids and they have contracts with various after school programs to, well, teach kids coding. It's been an experience.

It is the start of the new term and there is an element of disorganization that I don't find reassuring, but I do have support in the form of training and communication from management so that is nice, this first week I had two classes of my own and I was a substitute for a third, starting the week after next I will have four classes, two of them are way out in North Portland, the other two will be just a few blocks away from my home.

It's been interesting so far, my age ranged are from kindergarten through fifth grade, heavily weighted towards the younger side of that, so teaching actual coding languages isn't really in the cards, mostly we try to teach concepts in the form of games where you set up instructions for a character on screen to perform actions, once they get the hang of that we'll move into trying to create simple programs in Scratch, which is a more advanced form of that style of game that very nearly qualifies as a coding language but not quite.

The kids are nice, some really want to be there, some don't, they are all capable of grasping the concepts and making an effort and I haven't had any discipline issues once we get them set up at computers, after that it is all about roaming the class providing guidance and troubleshooting to the kids who decided to just sort of click randomly and open a million different tabs or something.

This has been exhausting for me, my particular issues involve having problems with crowds and noise, basically I try to pay attention to everything around me, and the more stuff there is around me the more stressed I get, parties and the like tend to be a blur for me because of this, I basically look back after going and my brain basically translates everything it experienced as a sort of static, just a blur of sound and light without much definition. This happens when I work too, but at previous jobs there has at least been a clear boundary between me and the people I am dealing with, like a counter or something. You don't get that with teaching so that is rough for me.

Clearly not impossible as I am doing it and don't intend on stopping just yet, it just wipes me out. I haven't stayed awake past about eleven PM for almost a full week now. On more than half the days I go to bed before ten. This is kind of okay really, as I get up early enough to make up for it and get things done in the day, so all in all it's a wash.

This isn't a tenable long term plan for me, pretty sure I wouldn't do well teaching full time and the hours for that aren't available anyway, this being an after school program after all. I think I would not mind exploring getting into the management portion of the business though. I could probably do well with that, in the meantime I need to get a second job. I have a few ideas on the subject and am not super worried about that.

Another new thing to add to my experiences I guess.