From Teaching Python to Leading Change

The Beginning: 4:30 PM Python Sessions

Every day at 4:30 PM, I'd walk into Team Optix at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) with a simple mission: make Python accessible to kids who had never seen a line of code before. What started as a straightforward teaching role quickly became one of the most formative leadership experiences of my life.

My First Day: The Humbling Reality

I walked in thinking I'd dazzle them with elegant algorithms. Instead, I spent 20 minutes explaining why we needed quotes around text in Python:

# What I thought I'd teach on day one:
def fibonacci(n):
    if n <= 1:
        return n
    return fibonacci(n-1) + fibonacci(n-2)

# What I actually taught:
print("Hello, World!")

# And spent 15 minutes explaining why this didn't work:
print(Hello, World!)
# SyntaxError: invalid syntax

That first syntax error taught me more about teaching than any education course could have. I realized that what seemed intuitive to me was completely foreign to them. I needed to completely rewire my approach.

Developing My Teaching Philosophy

After several sessions of confused faces and frustrated sighs, I developed a teaching methodology that would later influence how I lead teams:

# THE EVOLUTION OF MY TEACHING APPROACH

# Week 1 - The Disaster:
"Today we'll learn variables. A variable is a container for data..."
# Result: Blank stares, 3 kids fell asleep

# Week 3 - The Breakthrough:
"Let's make the computer remember your favorite color!"
name = "Alex"
favorite_color = "blue"
print(f"Hi {name}! I know your favorite color is {favorite_color}!")

# Result: Excitement, engagement, understanding!

The Breakthrough Moment

About a month into the program, something magical happened. A kid named Sarah, who had struggled with basic concepts, suddenly raised her hand:

"Wait, so if I can make variables for anything, I could make a program that tracks my allowance?"

That's when I knew we'd crossed the threshold from syntax memorization to computational thinking. She wasn't just learning Python - she was learning to see problems through a programmer's lens.

# Sarah's allowance tracker - her first independent project
allowance = 20
spent_on_snacks = 5
spent_on_games = 8
remaining = allowance - spent_on_snacks - spent_on_games

print(f"I started with ${allowance}")
print(f"I spent ${spent_on_snacks + spent_on_games}")
print(f"I have ${remaining} left!")

if remaining > 10:
    print("I can still buy that new book!")
else:
    print("I need to save more money.")

Teaching kids Python taught me that the best leaders don't just transfer knowledge - they inspire others to think differently about problems.

Beyond the Classroom: Del Mar Beach Cleanup

While teaching Python was shaping my communication skills, my involvement in environmental conservation was teaching me about community leadership and the reality of making tangible change.

The Shopping Cart Discovery

Three hours into our cleanup effort, as we worked our way along the shoreline, my team stumbled upon something unusual - the corner of a metal shopping cart handle poking through the sand. What started as curiosity quickly became an archaeological dig.

Extracting those shopping carts required coordinating eight volunteers, borrowing shovels from maintenance, and developing an impromptu logistics plan. But more importantly, it showed me how environmental problems often run deeper than what's visible on the surface.

Leadership Lessons from the Sand

The shopping cart incident became a masterclass in impromptu leadership:

Sometimes leadership isn't about having a plan - it's about rallying people around a shared purpose when unexpected challenges emerge.

Scouting at Ventura: Where Leadership Became Intentional

The Ventura Difference

Scouting at Ventura wasn't just about earning merit badges or going on camping trips. The program emphasized practical leadership development, ethical decision-making, and service-oriented thinking. Every activity was designed to challenge us to step up and take responsibility.

My First Leadership Challenge: The Failed Navigation Exercise

During a weekend camping trip in the Ventura hills, our troop was divided into patrols for a navigation challenge. As the newly appointed patrol leader, I was confident we'd excel. I was wrong.

"We're not lost, we're just... temporarily geographically challenged." - Me, trying to maintain morale after 2 hours of walking in circles

The Turnaround: Learning to Lead Collaboratively

That failed navigation exercise was exactly what I needed. The debrief session that evening, led by our Scoutmaster, became a pivotal moment in my leadership development:

The Eagle Scout Project: Bringing It All Together

My Eagle Scout project became the culmination of everything I'd learned from teaching Python, cleaning beaches, and leading scouts. I designed and led the construction of a community garden for an underserved elementary school.

Leading the Eagle Scout project taught me that effective leadership isn't about having all the answers - it's about bringing together the right people who collectively have all the answers.

The Integration: How It All Connects

Looking back, I can see how each experience built upon the others, creating a comprehensive leadership foundation that I couldn't have developed through any single activity.

The Leadership Triangle

Lessons for Emerging Leaders

If there's one thing I'd want other young leaders to understand, it's this: leadership development happens in the most unexpected places. Some of my most valuable lessons came not from leadership seminars or books, but from:

• A frustrated 12-year-old trying to understand why Print("hello") didn't work
• Two shopping carts buried in beach sand that required eight people to extract
• A failed navigation exercise that taught me more than any successful mission could have

The best leaders aren't those who never fail - they're those who learn from every failure and use those lessons to lift others up.