by Richard White

2018-04-22

I’ve worked at four different high schools in my career as an educator, and taught computer science courses at two of them. I was the lone CS teacher at those schools, as are many of us. It gives us a lot of freedom in some ways, but it also makes teaching CS a bit lonely sometimes: as a science teacher, I enjoy lunchtime conversations with colleagues in that department, and benefit from having a colleague who teaches the same course I do (AP Physics C).

Computer Science is different. It’s not what many teachers consider a “core competency,” I don’t have a department chair to advocate for me, and having a single teacher of that subject implies that the classes offered by the school are limited to subjects with which I have some familiarity: I am comfortable offering an Intro to Computer Science course in Python, an AP Computer Science A course, and an Advanced Topics in CS (data structures) class, but I don’t offer classes in mobile application development, networking, or game development.

After several years of encouraging the school to increase the number of sections of CS offered, I am so excited that we made the decision to hire someone for a Math/CS position, and that I’ll soon have a colleague with whom I’ll be sharing CS teaching duties.

It’s a time of transition for the school, and for me as well. I’ve never had a CS colleague before! The courses currently offered at the school have all been designed by me, and taught by me for so long that I suppose I might be forgiven for being a little possessive of them. And yet (at this point, anyway) I don’t feel too worried about that.

It may help that I’ve seen our new hire teaching a CS class and I appreciated the way he worked with the students. Or maybe I’m just looking forward to having conversations with a colleague with whom I can discuss curriculum ideas, teaching strategies, projects, etc.

This new hire is relatively young, and although he has a decent amount of experience programming in a variety of languages, this will be his first experience formally teaching CS.

At this point, the challenge facing me is this: how do I share what I’ve done with these classes with the new teacher?

• Course description? (of course)
• Course syllabus?
• Course calendar from last year?
• Lesson plans?
• Activities and projects?
• Assessments (tests, quizzes)?
• Teaching strategies?

I’m happy to share some/all of these things, but it’s also important for a teacher to be able to develop their own materials, and find their own way of teaching a class. I’ve worked with student teachers in the past, and giving them the freedom to find their own pedagogical identity is one of my favorite parts of that experience.

We’ll see how it all works out! In the meantime, I’m just so pleased that my school–a relatively small, independent institution–recognizes that providing CS experiences for as many students as possible is increasingly important.