Overall this week was a rather interesting one as I subbed from Wednesday to Friday. Overall I think this was a good experience as the students had done their work and were open to the assignments and work we were doing in class. Our CS Principles class was busy doing Think Like a Coder activities this week while our AP JAVA students prepared for the AP exam next Wednesday by doing a practice FRQ. For the most part, students were engaged with the FRQ as it took all of our Wednesday blocks to complete and Thursday and Friday to go over, but overall they did pretty well with the FRQ and they seem appreciative of the opportunity to get some practice in. Even though my knowledge of Java is very limited I was able to walk through the scoring guidelines to show them some potential things scorers may be looking for. By having the students self-grade themselves they were able to be more conscious of things they need to work on while also reducing my workload as an educator.
I think classroom management went pretty well this week for being the only teacher in the classroom for three days. There were minimal issues with my classes (if at all) and the planned activities went smoothly. However, I do think that overall I am still working on improving my overall classroom management but this set of days subbing left me feeling more confident to be in the classroom on my own this coming August.
This week we officially used Chat GPT as we introduced our project for our AP JAVA students. While we just laid the foundation for this work, I think our students are interested in it. I tested Chat GPT out and while it can generate multiple lines of code in Java there are some errors that I am excited to see my students try to fix when they encounter them next Thursday.
As a teacher I think this may have been one of my best weeks, not only was I confident and controlled but, I also had subbed for over half the week. Reflecting on this week is the realist identity that even though this was a good week that this does not mean that I won't have bad weeks. That I have the capabilities to be a good teacher but I need to continue to reflect and grow in my practice and understand that growth isn't always linear and is something that I need to continue working on even with the ups and downs.
This week I'd like to highlight the gender breakdown of my Computer Science classrooms as even though this is something commonly known in these spaces, it is important to bring highlight it. While I am not going to assume the number-by-number breakdown of my students' gender, I can say that the split for my CS classes is around a 70/30 split of male to female. My CT has already had a lot of progress as they make it a goal to encourage female students to join her classes and also sponsor some clubs that encourage female participation in male-dominated spaces. This has me reflecting on social studies as well as some of the classes I had taken (History, Poli-Sci, and Economics) are also male-dominated in both the profession and classroom at the post-secondary level. This as a result impacts this idea of representation in the curriculum as the curriculum also is reflected in those who contribute to the field of study. While the numbers in these fields continue to grow in participation, I think we need to fund/sponsor more programs that encourage participation and interest in not only computer science but other fields that are male-dominated as a way to bring more inclusion and diversity to these fields. We as educators also need to cultivate interest in these fields and encourage our students to participate in discussions about homogenous and heterogenous spaces and communities in secondary and post-secondary spaces to proactively combat issues of equity in such spaces.
As a final reflection, the Indiana General Assembly has passed many bills this week that I could go on about in multiple blog posts however I want to highlight the budget that has diverted public funding to voucher programs in the state. A part of this budget has nixed CTE grant requirements and has moved it to overall school funding. Overall I think will go to increase the technology gap as schools in more affluent and populous areas already have these resources and may be able to divert that funding into expansionary or curriculum-based projects while schools with outstanding debts and a smaller pool of resources such as urban schools with low funding or rural schools with less infrastructure will likely have to divert that funding to keep up with other schools who want to attract qualified candidates with larger salaries that these schools can't compete for with or other projects that would take precedence instead. Indiana is one of the best states when it comes to computer science education as most schools have programs in place however I feel as if this funding could stall the growth and progress we have came when it comes to CTE programs.
"The future of Indiana is in my Vouchers"
- Unnamed educator who referenced my "The future of Indiana is in my classroom" shirt.
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