I had not imagined teaching before, even though I had some experiences back in the day. This article is to share my practice of teaching. You might be someone wanting to start your own path, recording videos, placing them out there, and getting students, in programming or you want to be a mentor, I guess this article benefits you to have a solid strategy.

At first, I was hesitant to start, as why should I? or what are my motives? then I thought let’s give it a try. The competition out there, and the difficulty of capturing a video and recording your voice might stop you at first, but I did start it anyway, just as a hobby, and of course, it was pandemic.

I own a Macbook, however, I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of the voice recording, so I bought a RODE SmartLav Microphone, and then I had to use Camtasia to record my screen and voice. Soon enough I found out that I needed to have some intro videos too, So I purchased a subscription to Element Envato. All of these seem a lot actually when I am writing about it, maybe a little expensive for a hobby as well, but this one enables you to start an adventure that might give you a different perspective for your future.

Recorded my first videos and gradually I got better at it, from the way I was speaking, and the energy to how to edit the videos, and use Handbrake to bring down the size.

I tried to cover everything in my programming course, as someone who is a full-time developer, it was pretty straightforward, but some parts of teaching got my attention. Like, when I was teaching React Router, I thought the way I am explaining this will not make sense to someone who started programming, therefore I had to explain the background as well, sometimes I had to read them and find answers to my own questions because I had accepted them naturally and didn’t know why I am doing it that way, in the video, I had to explain them quite sensibly to my future students.

Halfway through my journey to record those videos, I had an interview myself with a new job, I was smashing the questions, I knew them confidently, I knew also what the keywords are to explain them, Consequently, I got the offer in few days! Yaay :)

I was overwhelmed with the experience, so then I recorded a few more courses, React Advanced, JavaScript, Clean Code, and so on. I have covered almost most of the things a Senior React Developer knows.

Then my courses started selling, students came along, and they started asking questions. Probably, I should have known ahead, as a teacher, I should try to talk in their language, I had read the book Learning how to learn, too. It should be another book about Learning how to teach, (A great idea, maybe I should write it myself ).

Anyway, the point is to explain a new point to someone, first you need to understand what they have learned, find the last dot in the graph of their knowledge, keep connecting them to newer dots, in the end, they will find their solutions and you could also make sure, they won’t forget it anymore as well.

Like if someone is asking me about how to resolve this issue in JavaScript, I found out I have to record a video, reproduce the bug, show the process that I find which line the error is happening, what my thought process is, and how I go step by step to fix it.

The other thing I found out was, Teaching to some students, seems like I am shaping some sort of network, students from different countries, other teachers, I get to communicate with them not only about their questions but also about their experiences, and that alone helped me a lot to know some really professional people.

These points alone are enough for someone to start recording their courses. but for me that advanced, now I am about to publish a course in a Learning Platforms, so I figure more students will appear and more lessons will be learned from there.

I was the one thinking why should I even bother recording or even teaching courses. or I was considering that I am just a beginner in the competition out there. but eventually, turned out to be a really beneficial practice and it still continues.

I recommend you, readers, to begin a concept that you were pondering about, might be teaching, recording, or even learning something. You never know what it leads you to until you begin.