What's next for the CS community?

Over the last few years there has been a huge push to train teachers to teach CS in preparation for AP CSP.  I am a product of that movement.  I am hugely appreciative for the work people at the College Board, NSF, and code.org has done to support that movement.

But now I am wondering, what is next for our community?  How do we build on this success?  What does success look like 5 years from now?  How do we get there?

What are the strengths of the CSed community?

• It seems to be filled with growth-mindset individuals.  Maybe it is because many of us were eager/willing to take on teaching a subject that was outside of our area of expertise.  Or, maybe it is because we are somewhat islands in our buildings, there isn't the same "crab bucket" effect that can take place in other departments.
• There is a lot of freedom.  Since CS is not held to the same types of frameworks as core content areas, teachers have a lot more freedom.  Even in courses where there are accountability measures like the AP exam, we don't have a PLC that we need to convince of our techniques.  We can try things, fail, refine, and re-try. 

What does success look like 5 years from now?

• When I think about MTBoS, I think one of its strengths is it doesn't get so caught up in the political nature of teaching.  It focuses on teaching and learning.  It focuses on doing what is right for students.  Obviously being political advocates for students is one way to "do what is right" from a "trickle down" perspective, but MTBoS does cool things in their classrooms and then shares it out.  We need people to advocate for CS education in districts, but I don't think that is really the community's focus.  Doing cool things in classrooms and then sharing those successes to the larger community will get CS in more schools.  I think about how MTBoS has teachers who have written books or been featured on TED talks or NPR... it is all good for the profession AND for students.
• Powerful, teacher created and tested resources.  MTBoS is really how I survived my first year teaching.  Specifically, Sam J Shah's precalc resources were huge!  His virtual filing cabinet opened doors to other teachers blogs.  It was awesome.  You got to see how so many teachers approached teaching the ambiguous case of SSA and then pick your favorite or adapt it to your context.  I would love to see CS teachers share out their lessons and approach with the same generosity and support as MTBoS.  MTBoS has a "My favorite..." feature at TMC, where teachers talk about their favorite thing they do in their classroom all year or their favorite lesson.  It is a good way to get the "best-of" resources.  I can contribute to this too... this year I can share out the modifications I make to CSP and maybe share out a 180 blog from AP CSA.  
• A Twitter-Math-Camp for Computer Science.  I would love to get people together who love CS and do an unconference EdCamp Style or model a conference after the MTBoS's Twitter Math Camp which started small and now has grown!  It is still really cheap (unlike CSTA's conference) and has some great teachers presenting on what they do in their classrooms.  We could totally do this too.
• More "teacher experts" in more branches of CS.  I would love to see teachers who work in pathways of CS - teachers who teach data science, teachers who teach cyber security, teachers who partner with industry to put students in internships, teachers who do purely project based seminar classes... we have AP CSP and AP CSA.  I would love to see what creative teachers do after these courses.  CSTBoS could be the place where we test out these new courses and share out learnings. 

How do we get there?

• I know it is cheap to answer a question with a question but... What role does CSTA play?  To me CSTA is to build local networks, and while there are state wide NCTM chapters, there role is much different than that of MTBoS.  I think CSTA can help strengthen our CSed community, especially around advocacy, but I don't see them necessarily supporting what teachers are already doing in their classrooms. 
• Get people on board.  Admittedly, we need a core group of people who are excited about this and are willing (and have time) to participate.  If it is a blog, a #teach180 commitment, or a place for teachers to share out their "My Favorite..." lesson/activity.  I am sure that every teacher has something to share out there - something that they do that we could learn from.
• Continue to build powerful PD.  So many people have been trained through various avenues, but let's consider what's next.  Can we do a Project Based Learning workshop with all other CS teachers? Can we think about what Complex instruction looks like in a CS classroom?  Let's leverage our expertise in a teacher-led weekend of workshops.
• Make it loud!  Amplify others' voices when it comes to CS.  When someone reads an idea on twitter or on a blog, and then tries it in their classroom, share how it went.  If you like an idea, build on it - throw out questions for the CSTBoS to ponder.  Contribute to movements #ethicalCS on Twitter to connect to other CS teachers and start a dialogue there.

Not sure how to get started? Check out advice from MTBoS about starting a blog.   Then consider blogging about anything you are interested in!  Consider some of the following questions to get started: What are your first day plans? Take pictures of your classroom - what does it look like? What are your goals for this year? How are you going to recruit students? What do you wish families/students/admin/politicians knew about teaching CS? What is your favorite lesson that you teach all year? What projects take off in your class? What PD has been most useful to you? How do you address inequities in your classroom? Consider doing a #teach180 blog where you write 2-3 sentences about how your day went.

What makes for good CS PD?

I have had the opportunity to experience a lot of PD over the last few years with KSTF and the huge surge in support for CS.  After attending Upperline Code's teacher workshop, I have been wondering what makes for good CS PD?

Good CS PD should put the teacher in the role of a learner.  I saw this in my EDC workshop in Mathematical Practices, in Upperline's Workshop, and at code.org.  By having teachers fully engage in a structure or routine for a CS classroom, they can better implement it in their own classes. ....

Good CS PD should have participants planning and teaching lessons.  This seems like a no-brainer to me now, but I will admit it wasn't always that way.  Just like a "good math class" should have students "doing math", good teaching PD should have participating teaching.  In Upperline, we co-planned and taught our lessons which was necessary from a time-saving perspective, but also helpful as we got to collaborate with other teachers and bounce ideas off one another as we planned.

Good CS PD should have a common language.  Whether it is talking about engagement, access, problem solving, abstraction, computational thinking, once we are able to have a shared vocabulary around what we are talking about, we can go deeper into these conversations.  Sometimes this shared vocabulary can become meaningless buzzwords, but I still think bringing some kind of awareness to our goals through establishing a common vocabulary gives all participants more opportunities to contribute.

Good CS PD should have a time to be reflective.  With Upperline, after we taught a lesson, we had a time to reflect on the lesson we just delivered and got feedback from the participants.  I think the feedback part was hugely helpful for me but I wonder how other teachers would respond, especially if there are teachers who aren't psyched to be there.  I think I assume that every teacher is as excited to be at PD as myself, so I forget that there are people who were "volun-told" to be there.  I know there are other ways to reflect on the lesson after it is delivered - by shifting the focus to reflecting on the lesson from the learner perspective or considering how students would react in the lesson.  Regardless, having time to reflect on the lessons helps me think about how I would apply what I saw in my own classroom.

I realize that many of these ideas aren't ONLY for CS PD, but really good practices for good PD in general.  

However, while these guidelines are all well and good, one of the biggest questions is what does the content for CS PD look like?  I have attended many CSP PD workshops (for code.org, CS50, or Mobile CSP) but they all center around the same content.  They focus on one curriculum's interpretation of the AP CSP standards.  When I have attended the EDC's workshop on Mathematical Practices (MPs), we learned how to incorporate MPs into any math course we were teaching from 6th grade math to 12th grade math.  I am wondering if we can do that for Computational Thinking standards.  Is that valuable for CS teachers?  Can we do a 2-4-1 and learn CS content (like, data science) AND computational thinking?  Is that, as the kids say, "doing too much"?  I acknowledge it is difficult to tell a teacher to develop a lesson plan on cyber-security without the teacher really knowing cyber-security, but maybe just giving teachers a direction is enough.   

In the Upperline Workshop, the CS content was all around web development.  We covered HTML, CSS, Ruby, loops, conditionals, etc.  At one point I was supposed to teach p5 - I realize that this is a broad thing to teach, but my partner and I narrowed down our specific goals for the class and then developed a task we wanted students to work towards in the class.  This practice was actually really useful.  I think you could do that with other CS topics as well - cyber-security, data science, etc.

Even while I hope to be able to teach some of the content I learned at Upperline in my CS classes, I expanded my own content knowledge in CS by participating in other teacher's lessons and experienced multiple ways of approaching CS instruction - some ways I liked and others that wouldn't fit my teaching style.  For me, as a teacher who is ready to further develop my own approach to teaching CS, having this experience was really valuable.

What does CSed Community 2.0 look like?

One of the main goals in our code.org PD is to build a CS community.  I think that happens at TeacherCons and at week-long PD.

But, the big question is, what next?!

1. How do we sustain this community?
2. Where do we continue to build these connections?  Twitter?  A forum?
3. What does the community need to be successful?
4. What are the goals of our community?

... alright, this is reminding me of KSTF's systems frame work...

(after a bit of Google Drive Digging)

I love the quote I got from a KSTF meeting a year back that "each system is uniquely designed to get the exact result it is getting".  I certainly need to unpack the system here for our CSed community on a national and local scale.  I'm writing that on my "blog-to-dos" now...

I still think the model of an inclusive ed community comes from MTBoS.  I really think the success of MTBoS has come from a few rock stars just rocking.  They blog and share their experiences really freely.  They take risks in their classrooms and share the results.

In talking with one of the participants at the Upperline Training, he mentioned that CSTA feels really inaccessible to many teachers.  It is expensive.  Even presenting at CSTA is cost-prohibitive for a lot of teachers which MAY result in having less strong sessions.

I look at MTBoS's solution to not having a space to celebrate their community in Twitter Math Camp.  It is wildly successful.  CS needs to get the right "whos" in place, but I think we could get there.

Right now, we are just trying to build capacity and get more CS teachers, but once we have CS teachers, how do we continue to support them?  It takes a bit of time, but how can we amplify voices of CS teachers and draw them into the community?

I would love to see CS have their own "CS" Twitter Camp as a place to build their national community.  I suppose the first place to start is local.  Right now, one other teacher and myself meet up monthly to talk about our classrooms. It is an awesome collaborative time.  I have learned a lot from him (and hopefully he has learned something from me).

My goal next year: To open this up wider.  Invite more teachers to grab a drink and talk about CS ed.  If I can do one in the fall and one in the spring, that would be awesome.  I think I want to focus on HS CS teachers at the moment, but I certainly want to grow it from there.