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by foofoo4u 1068 days ago
I've seen the enthusiasm for any subject wither away when a child or teen is told a particular subject is hard, whether that be math, a programming language, or learning a musical instrument. I was this way. In their totality, yes, the subject is hard. But what they aren't taught about any difficult subject matter is that they are achievable by breaking them up into a series of small, easier to understand concepts. Their practical utility grows as the number of these small steps are achieved. And as they are achieved, mini demonstrations of their use should be performed so the student understands the importance and gets exited to continue.

Example 1: "I learned five notes in shape 1 of the minor pentatonic scale. That took a bit of practice, but now I'm able to play a bunch of cool licks. Neat! If I continue this path, who knows what other cool licks I can pull off!".

Example 2: "I learned how to import libraries. My lesson had me register a twillio account. I imported the twillio library into my python script. And I copied some code that'll instruct the library to send me a text message. I don't quite understand these python concepts, but wow, this is really cool; I just got a text message from my computer program. The fact that libraries can give me abilities like these is neat. I can already imagine how I can build some basic automation to leverage them. Who knows what else I can accomplish if I discover more libraries and understand python better to actually build something automated!"