Off to Class

I am about 10 minutes away from leaving to give my first class in programming to kids. I probably should have done this last night (or earlier) but the thought only came to me at the last minute - which is typical for me - that if I want to blog about the class and share hopefully useful information about teaching comuters to kids I probably should start before my first class. I will use this post to tell a little about me and what I am thinking as I go off into the unknown.

I am 38 years old and have been living in Israel for the last 8 years. I have worked on wall street and wall street systems for the last 10 years first as a programmer and now as a client facing biz guy. I have been thinking for a while that I want to volunteer to some kind of charity work but mostly because I am supremely lazy have not done anything until now. I didnt know what I wanted to do but decided a few months ago that as I know a little about programming and I like kids (usually) I would give and get the most value by teaching programming. I spoke to my sister in law who teaches english at a school with a fair mix of under priveledged to middle class kids about it. She set up an appointment with the principal, I told him what I was planning to do (maybe more on this later) and he set up a date for me to begin - which is today!

I really have to go so a little about what I am expecting. I don't know. I dont know what the kids' backgrounds are, how much they know about computers, whether I can teach, whether my broken Hebrew will be a barrier, whether I am prepared enough, whether I have interesting material for 5th - 6th graders. I dont know. But I will find out and let you know later.