iD Tech Lead Instructor

In the Summer season of 2019, I worked as a Lead Instructor for iD Tech, a company that hosts day and overnight Summer camps at partnering universities to teach kids and teens varying skills in technology, interactive media, programming, and game design! For a couple of weeks I worked overnight camps at Monmouth University in New Jersey, teaching game design classes to teens. My courses specifically dealt with showcasing and instructing my students how to work with the Unreal Engine to create their own levels and even make their own Battle Royale-esque game inspired by Fortnite!

As one of the Lead Instructors during these weeks, I acted as the de-facto Director whenever he was unavailable, assisting in check-in and check-out for students, managing parent concerns, and collaborating with our university liaison.

In the mornings I would help wake up overnight campers sleeping in resident dorm rooms and make sure they get to breakfast. Then, our day is broken up into three segments of instruction, where I would balance and curate my lesson plans around them, accounting for breaks.

In the afternoons we had a required outdoor break for the students to get a breath of fresh air. It's always a good idea to get the students peeled away from the computers for an activity outside, including board games, sports games, or social games like Mafia.

As an instructor, I would utilize our lesson plan and a variety of balanced teaching strategies that cater to my students' skill levels and abilities. More advanced students assisted others while mastering their own techniques. Others preferred hands-on demonstrations of various Unreal Engine elements and processes, especially when tackling the comprehensive and complex Blueprint system. One of my preferred teaching strategies when talking about level design was to bring my students outside and have them identify interesting landmarks that could draw the attention of potential players. This was especially vital for good worlds in their Fortnite-inspired games.

One of my duties as one of the Lead Instructors was to handle medication and first-aid to students. I would keep a thorough log of each administering of medication or applications of first-aid, notiftying the students' parents when necessary.

Some of our students were overnight campers, meaning that we had to escort them to the dining hall to eat dinner as well as host an evening activity. There was no instruction time during this stretch, but we had fun having movie nights, board game nights, and gaming nights! After this, we enforced a lights-out policy at 10pm.

Being an instructor, especially one of the Lead Instructors, was a lot of hard work, but it was one of the most rewarding work I've had. Seeing students accomplish tough techniques and go about pushing their creative limtis to new levels is extremely satisfying, especially when they apply the knowledge I taught them into their level design.

At the end of the week, we hosted our Family Showcase, inviting all the parents for students to show their relatives what they learned throughout the week. Speaking with my students' relatives was always a fun experience, and a lot of the times even the students themselves answered the questions the guardians had for me.