Welcome your class to Chef Fundamentals Day 1. We'll be focusing on using Chef through everything that's available in the Chef Development Kit (chefdk).
Introduce yourself. Tell students your name, your current job role at Chef, a brief summary of your previous job roles/background, a recap of your experience with Chef/config management/automation, and a fun personal factoid.
Have your students introduce themselves.
We set expectations for the course by covering our anticipated outcomes, agenda, and interaction styles.
The purpose of introductions is to get to know your audience. Try to assess interests, skill level, and motivation for learning Chef so the instructor can later maintain a consistent level of engagement.
We set expectations because some students may have very little context about what Chef is, what this class will be like, or anything about the next couple of days. Immediately dispell the notion that Chef is a magic pony. Chef does not wave a wand and make complexity disappear. This is why automation should never be seen as threatening by students. Automators provide value by bringing their expertise to the table and making processes repeatable, testable, and scalable. Students new to automation may find it threatening. It's your job to help them see the value of tools like Chef.
We also set expectations to wrangle in students who may have some Chef experience, but are in Fundamentals because they want help with advanced topics. If the majority of any class would be well served by covering advanced topics, you should absolutely do what's right for that class. By setting these clear expectations up front, you establish recourse when you encounter scenarios where a majority of the class would not find advanced topics useful. These expectations work both ways. Be adamate about them.
We ask students to tell us about their backgrounds so that instructors can look for early signs of which students may fall on either side of the bell curve. Try assessing things like:
- Is this a developer or operations focused audience?
- How much of a disparity exists in Chef expertise?
- Which students have the least technical experience?
- Which students have the most technical experience that might be able to help those with the least?
- What is the common theme in backgrounds?
Consider practicing this portion with your own unique voice. This is a first impression that establishes trust and rapport. The more comfortable you can make your students feel and the more approachable you seem, the more likely you will have a successful class.
Many instructors find the concept of a question "parking lot" useful. Use a whiteboard to write down questions that veer off topic in a place where students can see them. Return to the parking lot as topics become relevant or as time permits.
20-30 minutes