hi, i'm sarder,

Responsibilites:

• Taught students of various grades (4-5, 8-9, and 6-7) coding and engineering essentials in Scratch, web development, and simplified Java.

• Engaged in various sports and lunch time games to keep students energized and excited throughout the long camp days.

• Worked with other Junior Instructos (like myself) to create one personal lecture/activity per week to teach the class

• Recorded down personal journal entries with detailed experiences and learning from the initial two weeks/classes.

• Answering any questions asked by visitors.

• Cooperated with staff and coworkers to ensure fluid operation and communication.

What I learned:

Despite having some knowledge of how to code, I found out that there's always more stuff to learn, even at the beginner level. I refined my rusty skills through helping other younger students and presenting a Flappy Bird demo with my coworkers. The next week, I learned how to use a Turing Tumble by explaining logic gates and binary to other high school students (super duper fun). And in the final week, I helped grade 5-6 students use Java to make diversive colour-changing patterns and taught how to create an advanced version of PONG in Scratch (the old-reliable).

The best learning experience was working with others. Prior to volunteering at Geering Up, it's been difficult finding ways to cooperate and balance projects with others (there's always someone doing more work than everyone else). In all the three weeks I volunteered, everyone I worked with was amazing, doing their parts in every presentation, speaking equal amounts, and helping out anyone who needed help.

My gratitude:

Playing sports outside like football and soccer, learning new games, and racing the kids (and letting them win) was definitely a learning experience on its own. It's unfortunate I can't come back to volunteer after graduation. But the bottom line: I spent the valuable time I had on the UBC campus teaching my favourite programming languages, eating lunch with friends, and just having a good time.

I learned from my time at Science World that it's difficult to keep the friends you got during the volunteering experience (espeically when most of them live in Vancouver and you live in a whole different city). Though I'm always grateful to the other Junior Instructors for making the helping and teaching process so fun and enjoyable.

To the official instructors and my three employers, thank you for aligning my schedule every week with a coding camp, it was incredibly fun being (sort of) a teacher for a change. I appreciate the personal "Thanks!"/appreaction e-mails from each of my instructor groups. It's always a pleasure branching out from my house from time to time, and if I had the chance, I'd do it again.