

Ask HN: Teaching programming to asylum seekers? - philippnagel

Hi,<p>my hometown (in Germany) hosts a facility where asylum seekers can stay until their application is processed.<p>To make their stay more pleasant and to help them learn something new, a charitable organization offers various courses there. They are always looking for volunteers that can teach about a new topic.<p>I thought some introduction to programming or web development might be a great addition to their offers.<p>I am not a teaching professional. Currently I study Philosophy and CS, while working at a tech startup. Do you have any tips for teaching, setting up a curriculum, etc.?
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jacquesm
Take any of the good online courses as a starting point, enroll those who want
to take part and guide them through the course. How do you plan to get access
to the equipment needed?

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dothis
Hey, that might be a good thing! I am in Germany too. Which city is it? Do you
have a link?

As for tips.. why not just start teaching the first steps in your favorite
language?

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dorfuss
The idea is great and I admire your lovingkindness.

There are some aspects I would mention, though, that you should take under
consideration. (I graduated in Cultural Anthropology and did work with asylum
seekers from Chechnya). I assume you're serious about what you want to do, not
just go-there-once and forget about it, so I also write dead seriously.

First of all - language and cultural differences. Don't underestimate these.
It's a very false assumption that people all around the world share the same
values, ideas and understanding. It could happen that you want to do something
good, and they would treat it as patronising for instance and get offended.
Mind the gender issues as well. And above all they are not at their best, on
the contrary, they are scared, alienated, impoverished, tense... Not an easy
crowd to get along with. You should have some professional to assist you,
someone knowledgeble you could talk to.

Secondly - I have been teaching Hebrew to a small group of people for free.
The average age is +30, all persons university graduades, and they DO want to
learn. But because there is no fee, they simply don't come to classes, don't
do the homework! I could not have made it easier for them - I made all the
materials, put them online and send them by e-mail, recorded readings in mp3,
printed the handouts and brought paper and pens to the classes so that
everyone is equipped. It doesn't work. They don't come regularily, they don't
work at home. My mother, a psychologist, laughed at me and said that I have to
charge for the classes and even take a collateral from them that will be
returned only under the condition that they have 90% attendance and do
homework. I don't know about asylum seekers, but I wouldn't be surprised they
completely ignore you (not in bad spirited manner). This also happens with the
language, the Chechens I worked with simply did not learn at classes. The
result was a TOTAL FAILURE. Again, it's not their fault, I don't mean that.
The system was broken. It's not enough to just come and teach.

Thirdly - I assume you will be dealing with adults. Adult education is very
much different than teaching children. It's not the good place to elaborate on
that, but the basic principle is that you have to rely on these people's
previous experiences, concepts, ideas. They are adults, so they are not "blank
pages" to be filled in with knowledge, they will not easily accept everything
you say. They have their own ideas, thinking patterns, views, so you have to
often ask questions such as: "What does it remind you?", "Does it look
familiar?", "Have you ever encountered...", "How do you understand...". Asking
these questions seems like slowing down the teaching process, but this is
adult education - you will not go around these issues, as people will start
telling you their experiences and thoughts anyway, and if they do it on their
own, it will mean "I am not dumb, I also have my say, we're equal" rather
than: "He's a really good teacher, I should share my views and see what he
thinks". It's tricky.

And finally - I am not sure if vocational training is what they really need. I
might be wrong, but based on my experiences in Denmark and to lesser extent in
Berlin, all the programs that we had for immigrants failed miserably (again,
please, I don't mean anything bad, I blame the system, no the poor people who
were forced to migrate). It most often shows that the best we can do is to get
them housing, some money, and really focus on providing excellent, inclusive
education for their children. I know it's harsh, but that's what I have seen
with my very own eyes.

My personal opinion, based on tens of interviews I had with the Chechens,
Palestinians, Turks, Iraqis, Somalis and Sudanese is that they are deprived of
the social aspects of life, not the economic ones. They look around and they
can see you go to Starbucks, but they can't. They can't go to a store, to the
movies, to read a book, drink tea and enjoy themselves. They cannot take a
phone and call a friend to chat and gossip, organise a party or put on nice
cloths and make-up. That's what's really painful when you are surrounded and
immersed in out consumptionis culture. They want to have a share in that as
well. You could say, well, first you have to work, then you can play and have
fun. But it is VERY possible thay they will never get to the point when they
can earn for similar consumption of goods and culture. And then they are
doomed to misery, poverty, and all bad stuff you hear on CNN.

I don't want to discourage you from teaching programming. It's a great idea.
But I just want to draw your attention to that maybe it would be nice to take
them to a park, drink coffee, cook together, learn their names and pronounce
them properly (very important), learn a few phrases in their languages,
encourage your friends to also build social relations with them,

tl,dr: be interested in them as human beings.

(p.s.: in general the demographics of the migrants is an interesting topic in
its own right, I think that those who seek asylum in Europe these days are
often from the "middle class" in their countries of origin, often more
progressive, more open-minded, better educated than the general "Western-
White" public thinks. It's the long cultivated view of the alien "barbarian
hordes". Some of them will do very well - if they had a grocery in Bagdad,
they will manage in Stockholm. If they were accountants back in Egipt, they
will open offices in Birmingham. These will not need to learn to code and
start from scratch).

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yariksheptykin
Here in Bremen, Germany, I had been wandering the same thing! I have
background in CS, some experience in teaching and experienced immigration
myself. Some friends of mine and myself started giving basic german classes to
a group of asylum seekers. We have been doing this for a 3 month now and
experiencing some of what dorfuss writes about. Especially regarding the
commitment to doing homework and attending classes. But also extreme desire of
some to learn and learn much. All guys that I met managed to learn more german
in 6 Months than I did in 2 years. Many don't want to come back. They want to
stay, study and work. I believe that having rudimentary CS skills is as
important as literacy in Germany nowadays especially for students. So I see a
great potential in such projects and would contribute to one. Adding to the
tips which the others mentioned here are some things we learned offering a
german class. This list is not backed up by education theory or even best
practices. This is just what we learned through trial and error in our own
little project.

Consider this:

\- Build/find a team. It is impossible to run such projects on your own. We
have 10 people divided in 2 groups. Each group is offering a class every two
weeks, i.e. this week Group 1, next week Group 2, week after Group 1, ...
Having a group helps to offer consistency in the face of unforeseeable events
like not feeling well,

\- Offer classes on a regular basis like every week on Tuesday at 18:00.
(otherwise people get confused.) \- Set a location. Always meet at the same
location. (otherwise people get confused.)

\- Remind people every week about the class. Go and pick them up at their
place if needed. Many come from cultures where saying 'see you next week' and
'Terminkalender' mean nothing.

\- Prepare yourself mentally to see no interest, don't get frustrated.
Sometimes we were standing there having only 1 student showed up. We then went
to every room again to advertise our class and got 10 guys to join on that
day. This does not happen often, but it happens.

\- Don"t offer incremental courses where every next class builds on top of the
previous. This won"t work. The people won"t show up, and will not do their
homework. Be ready to explain the 'alphabet' (like explaining what type is)
every time to some but also offer some intermediate material to others. We
split every group into basic and intermediate subgroups while teaching German,
this seems enough.

\- Prepare material in form of loosely coupled practical exercises for 2
levels: beginners and intermediate. For ex learning HTML a bunch of beginner
exercises would cover each single html element, a bunch of intermediate
exercises would cover combinations of elements for producing meaningful
layouts. But don't plan too much, having 2-3 weeks planning ahead is enough.
You will often have to reuse old material.

\- Offer some fun after a class, but don't offer breaks. We figured that 1.5
hours learning + 1 hour playing football, billiard, cards, or board games
afterwards works the best for us. Having some entertainment afterwards helps
to build personal connection - a very important thing.

Regarding the actual content I would suggest using Web technologies as the
basis for teaching CS. It is well documented (see
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Learn),
[http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp)).
There are lots of interactive examples. Everybody has experience using web.
It's everywhere, you don't need special software/hardware, one can even use
their smartphone to play with HTML/CSS/Javascript.

