Category: Teaching

Caring Goes a Long Way

This morning, I sent this out to students in my courses:

Hello one and all,

Let me tell you something that makes a bigger difference than most people realize: caring matters.

When you care about your work, your classmates, and your instructor, it shows. It shows in the way you write code, how you communicate, how you follow through, and how you respond when things do not go your way. Believe me, people can feel it.

Caring is not about trying to impress anyone; it’s about being genuine. It is about respect. It is about saying, “I value this class, the people in it, and the time we are all putting into it.” You can show care in simple ways that carry a great deal of weight. Come to Student Hours. Send a message in Canvas or Slack when you need help. Please let me know if anything is unclear or if you encounter any difficulties. Those small things tell me you care, and they make it much easier for me to show up for you.

When I see students who take extra time to ask a question, share an idea, or put in real effort, I notice it every time. You do not have to be perfect. You do not even have to know what you are doing half the time. What matters is that you care enough to try, to learn, and to connect.

The truth is, caring is contagious. When you care, others start to care too. That is how a class turns into a community.

Let us keep that energy going. It makes this whole thing worth it.

Bruce 🍕🦆

Tenure Made Me a Worse Professor (But I’m Taking It Back)

Today, May 24, marks my second anniversary of tenure. And I’ve got a confession. Tenure made me a worse professor.

Not worse in the “I don’t care anymore” sense. I still show up. I still teach my heart out. I still hand out pizza and rubber ducks, as if they were course materials. But something shifted during that long, grueling tenure process and hasn’t entirely returned.

The tenure process trains you to be careful. You learn to document everything, justify everything, and reflect on everything until your teaching feels more like a performance than a practice. You stop experimenting because experiments might not look great on paper. You stop taking risks because risks don’t always make for clean committee reports.

And if you’re not careful, you start teaching like someone is always watching. Because for a while, someone is.

That’s what happened to me. I slowly backed away from the version of myself who took bold swings and tried weird ideas. I started playing it safe, saying no to chaos and yes to control. I polished everything, trimmed the messy parts, and stopped leaning into the stuff that made my teaching mine.

But here’s the thing. I’m two years in now. I’ve got the stability. The security. The keys to the castle.

And I’m done playing small.

I want the pre-tenure Bruce back, who did things that made students laugh, think, and engage. The one who brought music into lessons. The one who asked, “What if?” instead of “Will this fit in my tenure binder?” The one who knew learning is supposed to be messy, unpredictable, and sometimes a little loud.

If tenure turned down your volume, I hear you. If it made you cautious, you’re not alone. But now that we’re here, we can choose how we show up again.

I’m choosing to take it back, one student, one duck, one slightly chaotic lesson at a time.

Let’s go.

Turning It In Isn’t the Starting Line

We must discuss whether you’re waiting until the assignment due date to care about your work.

Learning to prioritize is part of school and an essential learned skill. I want all my students to understand this: the due date isn’t the day to start working on your assignment. It’s the day you finish it. By the time you hit submit, you should have already asked questions, gotten help, made revisions, and made an effort to complete the assignment.

Students often turn in an assignment and then ask for feedback. This will not make a good impression in an employee/employer relationship. Don’t hand your boss, customer/client, or anyone else relying on you a half-baked project; expect them to be happy with it.

School is your opportunity to learn real-world solutions. It is where you learn to manage your time, advocate for yourself, and build standards of expectation. It is your chance to learn good management practices before facing the expectations and consequences of employment.

My advice is to treat your assignments like they matter before you submit them. Ask questions early, get help, and don’t wait until the last minute to care.

More Than Just HTML: Helping Students Believe in Themselves

I teach web development at a community college (Clark College), but let’s be real. Code is only part of the story.

What I teach is confidence, and occasionally, how to stop rage-AI-ing “why won’t my CSS center” at 11 p.m.

Many students show up thinking they’re not “tech people.” They doubt themselves before they’ve even typed <!DOCTYPE html>. Somewhere along the way, someone told them coding is only for hoodie-wearing geniuses or teenage YouTubers building apps in their sleep. I spend most of the quarter showing them that it is nonsense.

Yes, I teach HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Git, PHP, SQL, all the classics. But I also teach you how to fail forward, debug with a rubber duck, use vibe code when the plan falls apart, and not let a missing bracket ruin your day.

We talk about AI a lot because it is not going away. My students know it will not write their code for them, not if they want to pass, but they also learn how to ask it questions, get unstuck, and use it responsibly, like a teammate who never sleeps but sometimes gives wildly wrong advice with full confidence.

My favorite moments are when a student who started the class whispering, “I don’t think I belong here,” ends up staying after to help a classmate debug a form, slice of pizza in hand, casually explaining the event.preventDefault() as if it is no big deal.

Confidence is not something they walk in with. It is something they build: one messy project, one late-night aha moment, and one pizza-fueled study session at a time.

I just hand them the tools. And the duck. They do the rest.

From 48 to 62: A Teacher’s Journey Through Time and Tech

I’ve been thinking a lot lately as I get ready to turn 62 in July.
Thirteen years ago, at the age of 48, I began teaching Web Development at a community college. Back then, the age gap between my students and me didn’t seem like such a big deal. We connected easily. I was an experienced industry professional who still understood them.

Now? The gap feels wider. They’re teenagers and young adults, and I’m well, approaching retirement age. I’ve noticed that building trust, belief, and respect with students has become increasingly challenging. Not impossible, but different. I’m unsure if it’s me, them, the world, or how time works. Probably a little of all of it.

That said, I still see wins. I still have students who light up when they finally “get it,” who stick around after class to ask questions and tell me, months later, that something we discussed had a real impact. Those moments mean everything.
I’m sharing this because I know I’m not alone. If you’re a little (or a lot) older and working with younger generations, have you felt this too?

How are you bridging the gap? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

“How to Canvas” – The YouTube Channel for Teachers Using the Canvas LMS

The How to Canvas channel is dedicated to helping teachers enhance their abilities as they navigate the Canvas LMS. Discover tips and tricks of the platform as we create and curate content, enable settings, embed technology, and design teaching and learning communities for our students. Have fun exploring Canvas with me and make sure to subscribe so you can become a Canvas expert.

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/HowToCanvas/about

There’s also an accompanying website at https://www.howtocanvas.com/