Hello! I'm Brittney. I graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2023 with a Bachelor's in Computer Science. My "threads" I finished to graduate was Info & Internetworks and Devices, though I took many of the Systems courses. During my time in college, I had health issues arise that made it difficult for me to keep up in my courses. At different points I relied on the TA's and college tutors to help me keep up when I was brave enough to ask for help. Since graduating, I have been...
Hello! I'm Brittney. I graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2023 with a Bachelor's in Computer Science. My "threads" I finished to graduate was Info & Internetworks and Devices, though I took many of the Systems courses. During my time in college, I had health issues arise that made it difficult for me to keep up in my courses. At different points I relied on the TA's and college tutors to help me keep up when I was brave enough to ask for help. Since graduating, I have been working as a backend software engineer.
During the initial lockdown in spring 2020, I ran a small, free online class teaching python basics once a week for a couple months. The following two semesters I was a TA for Intro to Object-Oriented Programming, which was taught in Java. My favorite part of the job was working 1-on-1 with students in office hours. The next year I worked for a program as a virtual teaching assistant for a high school AP Computer Science Principles course, helping those students with confusions as they completed an online course. Outside of computer science, when we went back to campus I was a part of the ballroom dance team. For two years I was one of the main coaches on the team. I taught weekly classes and worked with couples individually during our practice hours to help them get ready for competition. Now I am a west coast swing competitor and have been teaching private lessons and occasional group classes for a year now.
What I've learned is that teaching computer science is much like teaching dance. Every person processes information on their own wavelength and a good teacher is one who can bend their own knowledge to fit. When working with a student 1-on-1, I like to get to know them and learn how they are thinking through a topic or problem. From there I like to act as more of a guide, poking and asking questions to help them understand the information in a way that aligns with how they think. When I was a TA, I loved how unique each student's approach & final submissions were.
