School Stuff (The Backlog!)

 As a math teacher, the calories per bar on this box annoys me.

This year, I'm teaching three sections of Geometry and three sections of Computer Science.

For Geometry, two of my sections are Honors (21 and 23 kids) and the last one is 'Advanced' (13 kids). I don't have a co-teacher which is sad (I like to be social), but the kids are less 'needy' (which necessitate a co-teacher!).

For Computer Science, I teach two sections of CS 101 (20 and 24 kids). We're still using CS Academy, so the beginning of the course has been almost entirely on it. I tweaked the pacing from last year to expect more at the beginning of the year. I was too lenient last year in the beginning and expected too little. We only made it to Unit 7 last year and most kids didn't finish the Unit. This year, I pushed the early progress faster. As of Winter Break, a little under half of the kids have finished Unit 4. There's still three weeks after break (assuming no snow), so I hope more students will hit that milestone. 

I did more with warm-ups last year, and I started with them this year. However, I quickly fell behind on grading the paper quizzes and by 2nd Quarter I gave up and focused on the coding. We tried the test for Unit 1, too, but I haven't done it for any other units. The kids are way too spread out. There's a large cadre that's charging ahead and then some holdouts who won't do anything without me forcing them along. Some of those kids struggle with reading and typing which make coding difficult, to say the least. 

I have one student who I work with exclusively in Spanish. A month or so in, I figured out there was a Spanish version of the course I transferred him over to. The computer doesn't care about human language. It translates it all into numbers anyway! There are some funny words that are close like "border" and "borde" where I'm sure an English speaking kid or two have typo'd and coded in Spanish by mistake, ha!

My final section is Computer Science 2 (15 kids). Scott taught it last year, and was scheduled to do it again this year until Lisa B accepted a job at Albemarle as an Athletic Director. Lisa had been going to pick up some Calculus blocks from Scott. Instead, he got more Calculus and they gave me his Computer Science 2. 

There wasn't a curriculum. Scott said he used CS Academy last year, but he didn't feel like it scaled well (and his kids were coming off  CS 1 from the Virtual School year. Most weren't the strongest with the material). 

So I've had to make it all up as I go. The kids are mostly enthusiastic, so it's been a totally different feel than many classes! I can let them talk and goof off more, but sometimes they come up with questions that challenge me! 

That said, there are variable familiarity levels. I had most of the kids last year, but several took CS1 a couple years ago. Two never got halfway through the Unit 1 material and another transferred from a different high school. 

Therefore, the 1st Quarter has been a crash course through all of CS 1. We've done a rough coverage of everything from all 11 units for CS 1. I wanted to encourage kids to take the initiative in their own thinking so we programmed a few games from one of Scott's math game books.

I thought it was fun, but there are definitely parts that seem easy until you try to code them! Reading original student code for bigger programs is more akin to reading essays than short math word problems. It's a different skill set that I'm still improving at.

2nd Q we'll break into CS 2 on CS Academy. I'm hoping to do something involving mobile phone programming 3rd Q (probably Android), and then using 4th Q to make cool (and hopefully useful) stuff. I don't know how much theory we'll hit, but I hope to at least improve everyone's coding skills. I don't know if there's going to be an AP CS next year or even what the curriculum would be for it if there was. Since I don't have a Master's Degree in CS, I wouldn't be allowed to teach it.

Overall, my schedule this year is way better than last year's. I have planning blocks 4A and 3B. I love having 4th block off. I'd rather show up and hit the ground running than have 1st block off. Kids feel the squirrel-iest at the end of the day, and with wrestling it helps to have a break before practice. 

Plus, there's a homeroom period at the start of the day. Since all of my homeroom kids are seniors, only a couple show up each morning. It's like having a 1st block off! I'll probably be given a group of freshman next year to cycle through with, so I plan to enjoy it while I can!

And that's the big school update. Things are going well enough. There are work completion and student management issues, but they're par for the course with a public high school.