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How to Coach 101

We want the coaching sessions to be as personal and natural as possible. No strict guidelines here, just some loose recommendations.

The Program Structure​

  • The Program Outline
  • Each module is covered by a different coach to increase the student's exposure
  • Weekly 1-hour meetings (online) between the coach and the student
  • Slack messages in between to unblock or followup

Your First Student​

  1. All students have done a simple HTML/CSS project to get into the program. But some may know way more, e.g. python.
  2. Some coaches like to schedule an initial 30-minute "intro" meeting to better know their student, their background, ambitions, ...
  3. Your student is asked to think about a project and prepare for their first session by learning git, vscode and thinking about their project for the first module
  4. Schedule a 30-minute call with Sahand before your very first session
  5. Read the module reference for your module

Your First Session Probably Goes Like:​

  • Intro
  • Talk about their project (more on this below)
  • Teach new concepts, pair-program
  • E.g. let's make a repository for your project and create the home page in basic html
  • Give them some detailed tasks for next week
  • Send them resources (youtube, how-to's, ...)

Projects Are The Core of Get Coding​

  • The student MUST select the project
  • You should control the scope so it's not too big/small
  • Students should start working on their project on day 1
  • The project becomes the curriculum. Start from the simple things (h1, div, etc.) to more complex parts (javascript).
  • For example, in the first modules students generally create the basic HTML/CSS structure of their project in the first week
  • This gets students into the habit of coding vs. watching a udemy course for 20 hours

Check out the #projects channel in slack to see some examples of what projects other students are doing.

Treat the student as a junior developer​

Imagine they are a junior developer who just joined your company and you are their mentor/supervisor. This means:

  • Guide them, but don’t solve their problems
  • Teach them to use Google, docs, … before asking for help
  • Try to connect with them. Talk about their/your hobbies, day-to-day, goals.

Frequent Commits​

The student should commit/push from day one and then every day they code, even if it’s a 1 line change.

This helps them build an active GitHub account and get comfortable with coding.

Do What YouTube Can't Do​

  • Help set up their dev environment
  • Code reviews, best practices, discussing different approaches
  • Providing them with good resources (youtube, docs, articles, books, etc.)
  • Connecting what you do at work to what they are learning

House Keeping / Payments​

  • Please message Jan and send him a pro picture, your title, company and technologies you are an expert in. It’s going on our website like this.

  • Use the Get Coding app (Web, Android, iOS) to log your sessions and get paid.

  • Feel free to use the Slack channel to chat with any of the other students or coaches, promote events, share resources or jobs, etc.