A friend who teaches industrial arts at one of the local public high schools called me last night. His principal called him in to her office and asked him where does she find a qualified CS teacher if she wants to start a CS program? (She asked him because he does teach a little programming for his robotics class.) Apparently she is considering introducing CS in the high school curriculum. (A school of 1000+ with no CS classes. Montana is a little behind.) So he calls me to ask the question because he know I dabble in that sort of thing. I tell him “You don’t. There aren’t any.” We chat for a while on the subject and I suggest he tell her to call me so I can explain her options. So after the call I sit and think, what are the options for a school looking for a CS teacher and to start a CS program? Here are the options as I see them.
Option 1 is to advertise for an experienced CS teacher and hope to get lucky. The odds of this happening are somewhere between zero and zip. Might as well wish for a pet unicorn.
Option 2 is to advertise for an CS qualified teacher, experienced or not. Last week on 60 Minutes someone stated that there were 75 CS teaching degrees handed out in the whole US last year. Pet unicorn again.
Option 3 is to point at an unsuspecting business teacher and say “Your it”. (Business teachers are automatically certified for CS in Montana. Even if they have never taken a CS course in their life. It seems Excel is CS.) In Montana this is the trend. Code.org and other canned curriculum start to rule. I guess it is better than nothing.
Option 4 is to ask if anyone is interested in teaching CS and have the school take the hit for not having a certified teacher teaching the class. This is sort of how I got into the field. When I started teaching CS in the early ‘80s there was no CS certification. I was interviewing for my first teaching job and was getting the school tour by the principal. The principal pointed to two TRS-80s still in the box and asked if I knew how to run them. Having just graduated from college with a Science/Math degree and with a little experience on Apple IIes and wanting the job I of course lied and said “Sure, no problem.” Poof! A CS teacher is born. I eventually got a degree in CS Ed. (In Montana I am a unicorn.)
Option 5 is to find a CS person who is interested in coming over to the dark side and teach CS. This is not as uncommon as it seems. I know of a number of CS teachers who started in industry and later came into education with CS experience. Considering the demand by industry for qualified CS people I think these people are going to be in unicorns status in Montana. There is no nifty shortcut for teacher certification in Montana that I know of so this might be another unicorn.
If this principal has another option I cannot think of it. The possibilities of getting a CS program started and having a trained CS teacher to implement it is a bit depressing. This should not be difficult. CS is one of the highest demanded job fields out there yet finding teachers to teach it is near impossible. Weird.
Garth's CS Education Blog 
March 6, 2019 at 6:02 pm |
Seems to me that an experienced teacher with a willingness to learn is the best bet. I’m sure that some come from industry to education (and I know a few awesome ones), but managing a classroom, writing curriculum, assessing projects, and most importantly, interacting with students, are all crucial skills that aren’t crucial in industry. If you can do those things and have aptitude and a hunger for learning, you can become a CS teacher. But where to find those individuals? Hmm…
March 6, 2019 at 7:01 pm |
Teacher to CS teacher would seem the best option. What can be scary is assuming all the teacher has to do is log in to something like code.org and they are a CS teacher. Schools are doing this and thinking they now have a CS program. Starting that way is fine if there are no other options, but staying that way through the years is not a good option. That teacher using code.org (or whatever cookbook curriculum) has to break out of that limited mold and develop. Formal CS professional development (back to the unicorn) and a personal desire to improve the curriculum are needed.
March 7, 2019 at 12:46 pm |
Agreed! That’s why I stressed a hunger to learn. If you love to learn, it’s a great place to be, because it’s always changing. I do think some formal CS education is extremely valuable. I used that to segue from teaching history and English to CS. Schools have to identify those lifelong learners and incentivize a transition.
March 8, 2019 at 12:14 pm |
Don’t know about Montana or other states, but the other place that public high school teachers exist and there are answers, paths to and licenses for teaching is the vocational technical area. In Massachusetts the key for me was learning that “Chapter 74” was the Google search that opened the door for me making the transition from industry to getting my licensure for “Programming and Web Development”. Loved the kids and the job.
March 13, 2019 at 4:38 am |
What do u mean by chapter 74?
March 8, 2019 at 2:14 pm |
Also check out TEALS, for teachers of option 3 team teach together with industry volunteers (option 5). https://www.tealsk12.org/
March 13, 2019 at 2:43 am |
I feel as if you are echoing my thoughts. I’m looking for an immersive coding curriculum for high schools and have been directed and redirected to code.org.
And then there are the plug and play options like robo garden. Which has a better option?
March 13, 2019 at 3:30 am |
My curriculum is self built with Scratch, Small Basic, Python, Java and Unity. There are multiple curriculum and books out there on each. The first year things are pretty sketchy but then the teacher gets a hang of it and starts to build a program to suit their ability. The biggest issue I found was the time required by the teacher. A lot of trial and error and digging up resources. The teacher has to be very interested in making this happen.