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Mentor Teaching Guide

Your operating manual for running the program. Read this once before Week 1.

The Prime Directive

Mentees should leave each session feeling more capable than when they arrived. Everything else — XP, rubrics, pacing — is in service of that.

Read this before Week 1

project-format-guide.md — the project-format arc across all 8 weeks. The lesson is the Git, not the build. Default to markdown; let complexity grow toward Week 8. Skipping this guide is the #1 way to lose the plot in Weeks 2–3.

Session Anatomy (90 min)

Time Block What happens
0–10 Warm-up "What did you push this week?" — celebrate, recap
10–25 Concept Whiteboard / slides — minimal talking head
25–55 Live demo You drive, narrate every keystroke
55–80 Pair work They try it; you circulate
80–90 Recap + project handout What we did, what's due, what's coming

Live Demo Rules

  1. Type slowly. Mentees read, then catch up.
  2. Read the error out loud before fixing it.
  3. Make a "planned mistake" once per session — model recovery.
  4. Always run git status between commands. It's the most underused command.

Common Student Mistakes (and how to head them off)

  • Committing without staging → demo git diff --staged early.
  • Force-pushing to main → set up branch protection in Week 4.
  • Pasting credentials into commits → make .gitignore a Week 1 ritual.
  • Detached HEAD panic → defuse it: "you're just looking around."
  • Conflict avoidance → engineer a merge conflict in Week 3 on purpose.

Giving Feedback

  • ✅ Specific: "Your commit message tells me why — that's the goal."
  • ✅ Actionable: "Try splitting this into two commits."
  • ✅ Growth-focused: "Next, see if you can do this without looking at the cheatsheet."
  • ❌ Avoid: "Looks good!" alone — it doesn't teach.

Red Flags 🚩

  • Mentee skips projects, only attends.
  • Work consistently incomplete or last-minute.
  • Stops asking questions (often = silently lost).
  • Visible anxiety about "breaking" Git.

For each flag, schedule a 1:1 the same week.

Pacing

See pacing-guide.md. Default to 2 sessions/week unless the cohort tells you otherwise.

Grading Capstones

Use the rubric in rubrics/. Aim for ≤ 48-hour turnaround on feedback — momentum matters more than perfection.