Breadth, Depth, and a Mild Case of Summer-Holiday Guilt
"So, on to dividing classes for next year. What do you think?"
That innocent team question had a lot more weight than it did in previous years. Because this year, I was silently considering more than just the current status quo in my educational career. Instead of just continuing two days a week as a computer science teacher at a secondary school and three days a week as a software development teacher at applied university level, I was offered another path:
Four days at the applied university, diving deep into software-development land.
As both roads are compelling in their own way, the decision was not an easy one. Getting there was messy. Various scenes played out in my mind. Each with their own uniqueness and promising futures, which didn't make things any easier.
I dreamed away into all kinds of scenarios, where situations in either secondary school or university made their appearances.
Picture a Tuesday afternoon. A student comes over and says,
"I’m building the back-end of my software in Elixir with Phoenix. Can you check my pipeline?"
When I started learning about computer science and programming myself, which is quite a few years ago now, I might have thought that Elixir was either a fantasy potion or a cheap energy drink. Apparently, it was also a programming language combined with its framework. An exotic one, maybe, but the architectural questions like "Where do I put business logic?" or *"Why is this coupling so tight?" are universal. So I sit down next to the student, sketch a quick sequence diagram, and we start the debugging adventure together.
When I just started as a teacher, I thought I should be the one holding all the technical knowledge. I should be the one that stands above all material. Because if it's not me who knows everything, then how can I expect a student to improve?
A few years later I discovered that teaching is not about knowing everything. I’m not the all-knowing wizard; I’m a person with knowledge about how to investigate challenges and what routes to take to reach a solution. But the eventual result is reached by the both of us, in unison. I'm just a co-investigator with a slightly better flashlight.
There are more scenes to this movie.
We've arrived on a Wednesday morning. Same world, different location. A student in my secondary school class waves their hand:
"Sir, my webpage turned white and won’t listen!"
I walk over, look at the code and spot at least three <html> tags dancing around the document, while a document of this type should be limited to just one of those. That's probably it. Within a minute I've asked some questions in return that led the student to a proper understanding of the error. The page renders and the student says, "How did you see that so fast?"
Easy. I’ve made that exact mistake since I don't know when. Maybe I actually am some kind of wizard, using my own markup battle scars to teach the new generation.
Two scenes, both telling two different stories that exist in the same educational world. Both worthwhile and exciting.
There's secondary school that casts a wide net, where one lesson might jump from app-design wireframes to software ethics. And then there's the deep ocean dive of applied university: fewer topics, more depth, and watching students develop and then ship production-ready code.
There's responsibility guilt with a three-month notice period for the secondary school to find my replacement, but the summer holiday that eats a proportional chunk out of that. It makes stepping aside now feel a bit like leaving the students and the rest of the staff behind. The rational brain might say that everyone is replaceable, but the emotional brain contradicts massively.
So, how the hell should I get to a final verdict in this meandering madness?
Honestly? I'll probably always remain undecided, even when a black-and-white decision is made. Eventually, I got on the "four-day lesson plans for the applied-university"-wagon, eager to finally have single focus again after years of split responsibilities. Luckily I also got the option to attach a one-day-per-week sidecar for next year's secondary school students, still able to put a hold to any rogue <html> tags that appear.
All's well that ends well.