Career Day
My friend, Andrea, and I went to a local elementary school today for their Career Days event. It's a very low-income district with lots of kids with English as their second language.
We talked to both a third grade and a fifth grade class about programming, project management and database administration. Andrea was much better about simplifying the subject matter for their level of understanding. I generally think of kids as just short adults so I tended to get too technical.
We told them how we went to college and continue to take classes. We said we use math and reading/writing skills every day and that learning to type would be good for them. We also talked about making mistakes and how important it is to own up to them, learn from them and be able to fix any problems you may cause but that everyone makes mistakes on occasion so they shouldn't be afraid of doing so.
One of the kids asked us if we got checks. I tried to explain the concept of direct deposit which I think may have been lost on some of the kids...some of their parents don't even have bank accounts.
What really got their attention, though, is when they asked how much we got paid. We didn't tell them our salaries but said that programmers can make anywhere from $35,000 to $60,000 to start out and that, if they're really good, they can make over $100,000 a year. (In case you want to ask, I am not that good.) I thought their eyes were literally going to pop out of their little kid heads.
We talked to both a third grade and a fifth grade class about programming, project management and database administration. Andrea was much better about simplifying the subject matter for their level of understanding. I generally think of kids as just short adults so I tended to get too technical.
We told them how we went to college and continue to take classes. We said we use math and reading/writing skills every day and that learning to type would be good for them. We also talked about making mistakes and how important it is to own up to them, learn from them and be able to fix any problems you may cause but that everyone makes mistakes on occasion so they shouldn't be afraid of doing so.
One of the kids asked us if we got checks. I tried to explain the concept of direct deposit which I think may have been lost on some of the kids...some of their parents don't even have bank accounts.
What really got their attention, though, is when they asked how much we got paid. We didn't tell them our salaries but said that programmers can make anywhere from $35,000 to $60,000 to start out and that, if they're really good, they can make over $100,000 a year. (In case you want to ask, I am not that good.) I thought their eyes were literally going to pop out of their little kid heads.
