While working at QBLC during the summer of 2021, I co-taught an AP Computer Science course for 35 local high school students. The course was taught in preparation for the AP Computer Science placement district exam, which required basic knowledge of the Java programming language. I was responsible for
- Scheduling and teaching topics such as data types, functions, selection statements, iteration statements, arrays, and classes.
- Creating all original in-class exercises, homework assignments, quizzes, and exams to help students practice and reinforce the material covered in class.
- Grading and providing feedback on all student assignments.
An in-depth understanding of the language was obviously required to teach the course, but I was also able to gain a lot of experience in teaching Computer Science principles to a group of students with little or no prior experience in a hybrid in-person and online environment.
Most of the students that I tutor at the TCNJ Tutoring Center are freshman CS majors learning Java and basic CS principles for the first time. I have helped many of these students with their homework assignments, projects, and exams, and have gained a lot of experience in explaining the fundamentals of the language to students with little or no prior experience.
Most of my Java knowledge comes from my AP Computer Science class that I took during my senior year of high school. This class not only taught me the fundamentals of Java, but also taught the basic principles of Computer Science, including some data structures, algorithms, and object-oriented programming. This knowledge in the language was, again, reinforced through my teaching experience at QBLC.