Teaching CS at 7:30 AM
For a full school year I taught an intro computer science class at Granite Falls
High School - first period, 7:30 to 8:25, before clocking into my real job.
What I learned:
- Nobody is too young or too rural to code. We got VS Code installed and the firewall configured; the rest was momentum.
- Mistakes are the curriculum. I shared my screen while coding so students watched me break things and fix them in real time.
- State machines explain everything. Bugs, loops, even why your game character walks through walls - draw the diagram and it clicks.
- Refactoring isn't a chore - teaching it upfront changes how students write their first program, not their tenth.
If you're an engineer in a small town with a school nearby: do this. It costs
one early morning a week and it might matter more than any ticket you'll close.
Three of my students went on to take the advanced CS elective. Worth every 6 AM alarm.