DS in tears over school coding club what do you think?

[Mrskeepforgettingmywords]

Signed DS up to after school coding club he has begged me for months and I changed my hours at work so he could go. He left school Thursday in tears he said the teacher sat on her laptop the whole time and handed the kids iPads. He said it was really difficult and when he asked for help she said I don’t have enough time now.

When I picked him up he bursted in to tears right away he has been waiting to go for months so it is that instant disappointment.

Would you expect a coding club to teach kids? Or is it just a get together.

My son goes to coding at secondary (yr7) and it's taught; they have a challenge for half a term and are guided through it. He did similar at primary and it was always very much instructed.

My son is in coding club - he lives for Mondays as thats when his club is (thats all he speaks about on Mondays) - the teacher (oddly enough my sons fav teacher) is a self confesses geek and he is SO engaging and makes it super fun, the class is always oversubscribed too, i nervous just thinking of the fight next year for it 😂 - OP i would speak to the school to align expectations.. is this a free class?

@Mrskeepforgettingmywords have the other kids been going since the start of term? Maybe they all knew what to do and the teacher didn't realise not everyone was familiar with the task? Might be they are working on something for a few weeks?

You’re not alone. I thought she sat on her laptop too. My nan sat on my glasses once. 😂

After school clubs can be erratic.

Children can also have ridiculous expectations.

Is there a coding club he could join privately in your area? We have one called Techy Tots that DD went to a few summer camps with when she was younger.

I learned to code (or "program", as we said then) in the 1970s when I was 14 (our maths teacher had contacts at the nearby university and hospital, and we got to use their computers in the evening). I was in top-stream maths and I found it pretty hard. You have to have a pretty solid grasp of numbers.

That said, if OP's DS is already coding and found the club hard, it could be simply that the teacher has no idea what they're doing. Maybe teacher is clueless and thinks there is only one programming language, and it's not the one that DS knows? What did the rest of the group think?

There probably isn’t anybody else. Maybe a parent should volunteer?

🤣 I have, more than once, sat on my children.

😁 peri here also, and I will admit to reading it that way initially too!

If it’s a free club, I probably wouldn’t bother. Primary teachers aren’t trained properly in coding and she was probably made to do it. I’d be surprised if she literally handed them iPads and didn’t even tell them what to go on or did any sort of brief intro. But it’s a shame that when your son asked for help, she said she didn’t have enough time (if that is true, and not slightly misconstrued by your son).
If he loves coding so much, I’d maybe see if there are some other clubs outside of school he could go to. They will be run by people well trained in coding and I bet he’d get so much more out of it!

Coding at this age will be drag-and-drop blocks rather than written code.
They likely use something like Scratch Jr on iPads and basically just play around, make their own very basic games or pictures or play other people's.

If its teacher run unfortunately lots of schools pressure people to take on unpaid overtime in the form of clubs, it then will be a bit of a crap club. The teacher hopefully won't be so busy next week and will help.

There's a chance she’s been told she has to put a club on but also has 100 other jobs to do before she’s meant to teach again in the morning. I understand it’s disappointing for your child but I also sympathise with primary school staff who are used as child care.

I’ve never heard of that saying so thought she was literally sitting on her laptop (which sounded uncomfortable lol).

I don't think you'd be out of place to speak to the teacher and ask how the club is meant to work because your son attended for the first time and felt upset as he was quite out of his depth so you just wanted to check it was the right club for him.

Like you say, is it meant to be more of a social get together for kids that enjoy coding or more of a learning environment?

Keep sending him, and ask for some time with the teacher to understand what the course will cover, etc - and sort of prompt her.
I would be all smiley smiley but quite pushy, saying your child loves coding, already knows python or whatever, and what will be covered in this course.

@Mrskeepforgettingmywords, you haven't answered the question of whether or not you are paying for this club. If you are, then yes, you should expect it to be taught. If you are not paying, then you are getting free childcare from someone who has been told they have to run this club, but will not be getting any extra pay for it, nor any extra time to complete the job they are actually paid to do. You would be VERY unreasonable to complain that your unpaid babysitter isn't doing enough.

Oh for Gods sake. I’m afraid, @Mrskeepforgettingmywords , you have disappeared down a Teachers Hate Having to do Clubd rabbit hole.

Your child was looking forward to it, was basically ignored and left tearful. Feed that back. I have to do stuff I would rather not do in my line of work all the time. Including on evenings and weekends. I still do it to the best of my ability. The kids will be using Scratch, you can almost guarantee. Download that to his iPad for a head start and then yes, of course feed back and absolutely mention you changed your hours so he could go.

www.scratchjr.org/

The school have been in touch apparently the teacher was setting them up with logins etc that day that’s why they didn’t do much. The coding club started last week so he hasn’t
missed anything. I pay £20 for each term so it is dead cheap but 15 kids do attend. Going to see how he gets on over the next few weeks.

I think you might need to help him learn to manage expectations better.

Sounds like he was just impatient to be doing stuff while the teacher was busy then.

to be fair, it threw me for a bit too, until I thought about it a bit more. my initial mental image was literally her sitting on top of a laptop

Not that I'm aware of - I've been forced to run a club previously. No time given back or resources given and doubt unions would be interested or able to do much. I genuinely feel for the teacher in this case, we don't know what else was going on this week that meant she had to work through. She could have had other after school meetings, parents' evenings, big pile of marking etc, a deep dive (internal review) that's left her behind after school. I understand the PP's DS being disappointed but wonder if he spoke up early in the club session. I'd also work on being a little more resilient - different take if the club was a paid activity, it would be fair to go elsewhere.

You might want to manage his expectations a bit as coding clubs in school tend to be quite low-key and one of the more slow burner activities.