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The classroom · Teaching and mentoring · Ongoing

Where people told me what I do.

How an explanation should feel from the inside. A chalkboard full of tangled chalk lines clears, as you scroll, into three boxes joined by arrows: what you already know, then the one missing piece, then the whole picture.

I've taught physics, English, and software. I've mentored people into careers they didn't think they could enter. And whenever anything needed presenting, I was usually the one asked to stand up and do it.

My method is easy to describe and hard to fake. Before I explain anything, I find out what you already understand. Then I find the one piece you're missing, and I build the explanation around that gap, not around the textbook.

Physics first.

I taught physics to high school students during my last years of engineering college. I love physics. To me it's the core science: once you understand the rules nature follows, you can anticipate what will happen, and build almost anything on top of it. That love is where my habit of wanting to crack how everything works comes from.

I taught it through daily life: examples from things my students saw every day, tricks that made the hard parts stick, and lessons they actually enjoyed.

  • A door: turning force grows with distance from the hinge.

  • Braking: stopping takes distance, because motion carries on.

  • A cooling cup: heat always flows to the colder side.

The kind of everyday example I taught through.

The same lesson, two rooms.

The high school curriculum and the first college physics courses overlap a lot, so I often taught the same content to two very different groups. The science didn't change. What I said did: which example to open with, what to skip, where each group would get stuck. Both groups loved it, and that taught me something I've used ever since. There is no single right explanation, only the right one for the person in front of you.

Same topic: motion

High school

  1. 1Start with a story
  2. 2One formula, fully understood
  3. 3A trick to remember it

College

  1. 1Start with the derivation
  2. 2Where it breaks down
  3. 3How engineers use it
An example of one lesson, told two ways.

Before the tools, the problem.

I also taught software, and English. With course providers in my town, I ran cohorts for people breaking into software, including people who had never used a laptop and had no idea how a computer works. Some of those providers built their reputation on those workshops, because of the people who came out of them.

Most courses jump straight into a language: here's Python, here's C++, type this. I never started there. Programming is a technology invented to do something people used to do another way. So we started with that: the problem, the history of how it was handled before, and the science underneath. Then the tools. By the time my students wrote code, they knew where it fit in the bigger picture, and why.

How most courses start

Open the editor, type this

How I start

  1. 1The problem
  2. 2How it was solved before
  3. 3The science underneath
  4. 4Then the tools
Two ways to start a first lesson in programming.

Breaking in.

Some of the mentoring I'm proudest of was getting people into careers they thought were closed to them. I helped a friend become a graphic designer who, when we started, had never opened a computer. I helped another friend into video production, another into software, and someone I'd never met, the friend of a friend, into AI and automation without an engineering degree.

I only mentor where I have real experience. And I don't charge for it. I have other ways to earn a living. Seeing someone's life change is the point.

Four people, four new careers.

  • Graphic design

  • Video production

  • Software

  • AI and automation

Four open doorways, each with someone walking through toward the light on the other side.

How we make a decision.

People I work with bring me decisions as much as questions: what to learn, what to read, which job to take, how to plan the next few years. I have a process for it. First, we build a model of everything that goes into the decision. Then we break it down: what matters, what doesn't, what the past says, what the present allows, and where each choice leads. We walk through it step by step until the picture changes. Then we decide.

  1. 1

    Map every input

  2. 2

    Break it down: keep or drop

  3. 3

    Past, present, future

  4. 4

    Reframe, then decide

A week to a month
Four stages, left to right. Stage two shows a sieve: some inputs stay on the mesh, and the rest fall through.

It can take a week, or a month, depending on the decision. I've walked friends through moving to another country, and through leaving a full-time job to start a company, and then helped build that company with them.

  • What you'd learn
  • What the market needs
  • What you'd be paid to solve
  • What you'd learn
  • What the market needs
  • What you'd be paid to solve
Two doors, the same questions. One path splits into two. Each branch passes the same three questions and ends at a door, and one door is outlined in green.

What to learn next.

When an engineer asks me what to learn next, we don't start with a list of trending tools. We start with where they are, where they want to be, and which problems they'll be paid to solve. Then we cross things out. The list always gets shorter, and what's left is something they can actually finish. Lately, the most common version of the question is which AI tool to learn. My answer is usually to learn how the models work first, and let the tools come and go.

  1. Another framework (crossed out)
  2. A new course (crossed out)
  3. A certificate (crossed out)
  4. The tool everyone's talking about (crossed out)
  5. A second language (crossed out)
  6. A side project (crossed out)
  7. The fundamentals under your stack
  8. The problem your next job pays for
  9. One project that proves it
  10. A mentor's review (crossed out)
An example of how a list gets shorter.

Bringing AI into how people work.

I also sit with executives and teams who want AI in their work but don't know where it fits. I start by explaining what the different kinds of models actually are, what each one is good at, where each one breaks, and what it costs to run, in words anyone in the room can follow. Then we walk through how they already work, step by step, and put AI only where it gives real hours back. The steps that need judgment stay with people.

  1. 1Intake
  2. Automate
    2Sorting
  3. Automate
    3Drafting
  4. Keep human
    4Review
  5. Automate
    5Follow-up
  6. 6Reporting
An example of where automation earns its place.

Explaining is how I work, not only how I teach.

Even at work, I explain by default. When I hand a change over for review, I write a short teaching note with it: what changed, why, how it works, which files to look at, how to review it, and what to watch for. The person reviewing it shouldn't have to reverse-engineer what I was thinking.

What
Why
How
Files
How to review
Watch for
The six parts of the note I hand over with a change.

Always the one asked to present.

I've been speaking in public since elementary school: three talks there, about five in preparatory school, competitions and prizes for my schools along the way. In high school, whenever the school needed someone to speak on anything, they came to me, and I learned the subject and delivered it: the environment, public health and pollution, how technology makes life easier and harder at the same time, social media when it was brand new, poetry, philosophy, Arabic literature, how to study, psychology.

In college I gave talks on psychology, and student activities invited me to speak about media production, design, programming, web security, and balancing work with studying. At the resort, my managers asked me to speak at the annual staff ceremony about how someone from outside hospitality had done well there. Online or in a hall, if something needed presenting, people usually asked me.

  • Environment
  • Public health
  • Technology
  • Social media
  • Poetry
  • Philosophy
  • Arabic literature
  • How to study
  • Psychology
  • Media production
  • Design
  • Programming
  • Web security

  1. Elementary school

    3 talks

  2. Preparatory school

    about 5, plus prizes

  3. High school

    whenever asked

  4. College

    events and student activities

  5. Work

    staff ceremonies and presentations

Where I've spoken, and some of the topics.

I talk to a full room the way I'd talk to one friend.

A full room, one friend. Rows of seats in a lecture hall fold into a single desk with two chairs facing each other.

What they told me

“This has never been explained to me this well.”

Someone I taught

“You found exactly what I was missing, and put it straight into my head.”

Someone I taught

“I came to you with something that felt dark and lost. I left with the whole picture, and how every piece connects.”

Someone I mentored

“You make everything sound easy.”

Someone I taught

“You talk in public the way you'd talk to a friend in a dorm room.”

Someone in the audience

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