My First Time Being a Trainer: Teaching Next.js to a Diverse Class

Mar 10, 2026 · 7 min read

TeachingNext.jsReactMentorshipCommunity

A friend asked me to teach a Next.js class organized for women and people with disabilities. I said yes immediately. It was my first time being a trainer, and I had no idea what I was getting into.

The Setup

The class was two hours per session, a few evenings a week. The premise was simple: take complete beginners and get them to build a functional Next.js app by the end of the course.

The students who enrolled didn't have disabilities, and the class was open to all — but the framing shaped how I approached the material. I designed every lesson to be as accessible as possible: clear explanations, lots of visual diagrams, plenty of time for questions, and no assumption of prior knowledge.

The Material

I structured the course around building a single app over multiple sessions:

  1. Session 1: What is Next.js? File-based routing, pages vs components
  2. Session 2: Data fetching — SSR, SSG, and when to use each
  3. Session 3: API routes, form handling, and mutations
  4. Session 4: Auth basics with session cookies
  5. Session 5: Deployment on Vercel

Each session ended with a working increment. By session 3, every student had a deployed app that could read and write data.

What I Learned About Teaching

  • Live coding is risky but effective — I made mistakes on purpose sometimes. Watching me debug in real-time taught more than a perfect demo ever could.
  • Explain the same concept three different ways — everyone learns differently. Code, diagram, analogies. At least three angles per concept.
  • Silence is okay — give people time to process before filling the gap with another explanation.
  • The best feedback comes after class — in a group setting, people don't ask the questions they really have. A one-on-one follow-up chat revealed what actually confused them.

The Result

Every student shipped their app. A few continued building after the course ended. One reached out months later to say they got their first dev job using the portfolio they built in class.

I went in thinking I'd teach coding. I came out understanding that teaching is mostly about removing fear — the fear of breaking things, of not being smart enough, of asking the wrong question. Once that's gone, the rest is just syntax.