Hope the OP finds the right way...
Don,
Just random thought, I emulate these displays on PC. Fairly straight forward, I rewrite a LiquidCrystal class and it writes to a command prompt like all windows console programs do and pretend it were a real LCD (well it IS displayed on my computer LCD 
) So maybe it's easier to emulate them as beginners before actually connecting up wires?
Too bad the basic Arduino serial monitor doesn't have cursor control. Otherwise I could port my emulator to Arduino serial monitor and newbies can play with "LCDs" all day long without connecting up a single wire. Instant gratification! But then if they encounter problem in actually wiring LCDs, we know their code is already solid from the emulation, half problem solved, no need to sing the "post the code" song. Have you read that post, hilarious 
I'll think of something to solve "post the code" problem. I might just create a Processing window to do that, if I still remember how that was done before or I will only try to address windows users.