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.

Norms in My Educational Communities

So far, I've got:

1. I love KSTF's norms.  They are fantastic!  
2. I have control over the norms in my classroom, therefore I am going to ensure that there are positive norms in place.

And now, I've got norms in my educational communities.  This is the one I have probably thought the most about, and feel like I know the least about.  I am eager to understand the "what's going on here" of norms in my educational communities.

First off, I am a part of lots of educational communities, code.org, MTBoS, KSTF, CSTA-MN... and for the most part I am a part of all of these communities because I appreciate the norms in those communities.  I choose to participate in those communities because of their norms.  

But the biggest educational community I am part of is in my school.  Even within my school there are tons of sub-communities: PLCs, departments, committees.  Furthermore, the norms in each of these sub-communities impact each other.  In short, it is complicated.

I know there are the 7 norms of collaboration that every educator has seen in a power point at some time - and they are great norms.  There's absolutely nothing wrong with them.  But putting a list of norms in front of someone and actually having those norms valued and practiced are two different things.  Norms exist regardless of if they are stated or written down somewhere, which made me think, what are the norms that my department and school has? 

One of my goals this year is to better understand the norms already in place at my school and department. I wonder how I can tackle this.  Are there ways to think about different types of norms?  There are norms around communication, collaboration, and decision making.  What other categories of norms exist out there?

Even when thinking about communication, collaboration, and decision making, there are a lot of questions to be considered!  For example...

Communication:

• How do we communicate? In person? Via e-mail? How often?
• When do we communicate?
• What do we communicate about?  What is "worth" sharing?
• Who talks and who listens?  Who is invited?
• How do we know when people are listening?
• What do we expect interactions to look/sound like during meetings?  During lunch?  In the hall?

Collaboration:

• What transactional collaboration is taking place? Who is doing it? What are their motives?
• What transformational collaboration is taking place? Who is doing ti? What are their motives?
• What types of collaboration is sought out? Tranactional vs. transformational? Between courses?  Between departments?
• What time is provided/created for collaboration?
• Who decides who collaborates?
• How does collaboration in one layer of an educational communities impact collaboration? 

Decision Making:

• What decisions are made about curriculum, instruction, policies? How and where are they made?
• Who is invited into the decision making process and who invites them?
• What decisions need to be made by the whole department/building and what decisions are left to be made by other sub-communities?
• What happens when someone disagrees with a decision?

Moving forward, I wonder what other norms our department has around the values of our department or the propose of teaching in general (and math specifically).  I keep thinking back to Taylor Williams (@MrWilliamsSTEM) who shared one of his school's documents on "What is Math at our school?" which explained values of their department.  I have long wondered what such a conversation like this would yield in my department.  Furthermore, after reading Why School? by Mike Rose for KSTF, I have wondered what our building would say the purpose of school is.  How would having these conversations help us better formulate norms for our educational communities?

For KSTF this year, I am looking at norms in my educational communities and as I explore what norms already exist in my department/school, I wonder what norms other people see.  I wonder if I am too close to the data to really be able to make sense of the data.  I wonder what assumptions I already have.  I wonder how an outsider would make sense of the same data. 

What does it mean to be a professional in teaching?

While in my Islamic Art class, I met two art teachers who were taking the class as well.  They were interested in using it in their own art and in their classrooms.  It was fantastic talking with them about collaboration across content areas and what it means to be a professional as a teacher.

This made me think about what it means to be a "professional" in the field of teaching and how you "advance" in the career.  We have been talking about this at the KSTF summer meeting as well.  At KSTF summer meeting, several fellows mentioned that things they do in their school are seen as "leadership moves" - essentially moves that they are doing to show competency as a future admin, rather than authentic things that they think are will bring upon educational improvement.  Many of these teachers, like myself, have no interest in going into admin, but do want to improve education outside their classroom.  I am wondering is there a space for this type of action in my school or in other educational communities I am a part of.

MTBoS seems like an excellent example of teacher leadership - these are teachers who for the most part want to stay in the classroom but do extraordinary things to invite others into their classroom.  By inviting others in (though blogs, twitter, etc.) they are really impacting education far beyond their classroom.  I am a better teacher today because I follow Sam J Shah, Kate Novak and the like.  By participating in #teach180, I was able to open up my classroom and was certainly more involved in the larger STEM teacher community as a result.  I don't know if I impacted others outside my classroom but I do know that I learned a lot from participating with this educational community.

In addition to MTBoS I am beyond excited to be part of code.org's team this year!  I will be teaching AP CSP this year using their curriculum again and am excited to (hopefully) implement it with a little more confidence and with the ability to provide more extensions for students this year. Additionally, I am a facilitator for their CSP program which has given me access to the community of AP CSP facilitators as well as the ability to provide support for other CSP teachers through workshops and in an online community.  This feels like a more traditional path to leadership, but what I love about code.org is that their PD model asks facilitators to do just that, facilitate learning - not dictate it.  I appreciate the PD approach where you put teachers in the role of a learner and ask them to reflect on that process.  Seeing that reflection focus on engagement and equity is powerful for me to see since in my school community, I have not seen PD take this approach in the past.  ALTHOUGH, now that I have seen it done (and semi-facilitated it myself) I am wondering how (and if) I can bring that to my school community.

Finally, while in London, both of the teachers I met in my classes were exhibitionist artists in addition to teachers.  One of them mentioned that as a professional art teacher, she has decided it is important to be an exhibiting artist since she is teaching students to be artists, she needs to be an artist as well.   However, this individual felt like that being an exhibiting artist was not valued by her peers or by administration.  They thought of it as a "side thing" rather than an essential part of her professional development.  I wonder how being a mathematician, historian, or writer can be an act of teacher leadership.

In my first year of KSTF we did a lot with the different types of knowledge that teachers needed.  There was a diagram of an egg.  It kinda looked like this.

Now that I think about it, there were a lot of versions of the egg that we saw, BUT the point is that there are a lot of different things you need to know and be able to do.  Somehow, the knowledge of content seems to get pushed to the background at times.  Shouldn't it be important that people teaching math also practice math - that they put themselves into the position of actually LEARNING math.  Every time I take a math class after a while, I gain a new appreciation for what we put our students through in math.  When I had to take a college level geometry class after two years out of grad school I didn't understand 2/3 of what the professor was writing on the board!  Additionally, taking a math class helps me practice thinking like a mathematician and talking with other math students helps me practice communicating mathematically.  I wish our culture valued having teachers further their own content knowledge more - I think there is a perception out there that anyone who took high school algebra can teach high school algebra.  Even fellow math teachers have said that they don't use Abstract Algebra to teach Algebra 1.   Which, might be in part true, BUT that sounds awfully like what our students say ("When are we ever going to use this?") - a complaint that is often dismissed.  The point is that doing math at any level grows your brain and gives people new tools to look at the world and solve problems.

As far as my time in Europe goes, my time is London is done for the time being and I headed to Madrid yesterday and Cordoba today.  Cordoba has a lot of tiling everywhere!  I went to a synagogue that was originally a mosque where saw some more original tiling but I took pictures with my camera so I cannot post them here.  Then we went to some ruins at Medina Azahara .  While a lot of the decoration had deteriorated, the museum gave a good idea of what the palace was originally like.