learn-co-curriculum / what-do-i-know

What do I know, How can I grow?

In order to make the most out of your learning, you need to build your own awareness of your skills and knowledge and get clarity on the ways you want to grow.

What do I know

Self-knowledge is hard to come by. You have likely seen some SQL before - but when can you say that you really know SQL? As humans, we are pinned between the Scylla and Charybdis of self-knowledge, the Dunning-Kruger Effect and Impostor Syndrome. Getting an accurate picture of your own knowledge takes work!

External, objective assessment can be a helpful tool for finding hidden gaps in your own understanding as well as for validating your confidence in your knowledge. Over the course of this curriculum, we'll have lots of opportunities for self-checks and self-reflection. Many of these will involve producing artifacts - solving a particular coding challenge or lab, building a project, or writing a blog post. At several points, you'll have code reviewed by another instructor, in order to get social validation that you indeed know what you're doing, and to get feedback on subtle areas of improvement that are difficult to see on your own or to pick up from reading and lessons.

How can I grow

While this curriculum is opinionated about what the set of skills and knowledge TCs ought to learn, everyone has different goals and interests. Some of the content in the curriculum is necessary in order to be effective in helping students, but other content won't necessarily be something that you'll use to help students - at least not directly.

Importantly, you can't keep up with everything. Read this short blog post on Deciding What Not To Learn.

In order to get the most from this curriculum, it's helpful to center on your own learning goals. We'll do a guided reflection exercise on your goals now. We'll have more opportunities to revisit your goals at different points of the curriculum, and you are hereby encouraged to revisit and reflect on your goals on your own!

Initial Self-assessment

This reflection exercise will help you rate your own skills and knowledge, so that you know where you need to focus your learning.

Fill out this Growth Form and review your reflection and goals with your SEM.

Focus and Single-tasking

When thinking about your own learning, it's worth reviewing what we know about the science of learning. Read the wiki section on Improving Learning.

As you're planning to work through this curriculum, think about how you'll make your learning most effective.

• How will you avoid distraction and focus on just one thing at a time?
• How will you plan to take appropriate breaks?
• What do you need to control about your environment to make your learning work best?
• When will you work on this curriculum?

This is your learning. Taking ownership of it means setting yourself up for success.