Being part of the Community Education Initiative has been an incredible educational experience for me. The cohort from my district formed a team that we call “Code Squad”. This team has not only become a source of support for our CEI work, but also a source of support for questions or problems that arise in our daily work. The Code Squad has members from each of the campuses in our district and the things we are learning through the program are having an impact at all levels.
My favorite part of the Teacher Academy in June was learning the design process and working through that process of designing an app for the community app challenge. The work and the presentation of our app was challenging and educational. It gave us experience in designing an app that we were able to replicate at our coding camp. I also enjoyed the introduction to the Swift and the resources available to teach Swift to our students. These resources were used in classes as well as at our Hour of Code event in December. One final takeaway from the Teacher Academy was the power of embracing making mistakes or something did not work right. When we were designing the apps or working through the other work in the Academy, we would call out our mistakes or struggles and this allowed us to be supported by others on our team or cohort. This helped to reinforce a growth mindset.
After the Teacher Academy, we planned and hosted our first coding camp. We replicated many of the things we had learned at the Teacher Academy in an abbreviated manner as our camp was four 4 hour days. The students ranged in grades from elementary to high school. We had parts of the camp that were grade level specific, but for the community app challenge we used groups that combined students from all grade levels on one team. This camp was a success and we plan to make it an annual event, though we are going to change the timing of the camp so that we can have a full day camp and provide lunch.
During the fall, we worked through creating our innovation proposal. The code squad worked together to create one innovation proposal that could be implemented at each both the middle school and the elementary schools. This was done to help us gain district support. The proposal looked a little different at the middle school and elementary schools based on age appropriateness, but the overall plan was the same. It took some time to get the proposal to a place that I was happy with, but in the end I was happy with how it came together. In the proposal, we asked for district level support for coding, including two hour of code nights and a week long, full-day, summer coding camp. In addition, we asked for support in the form of time to plan cross-curricular units with other teachers on the campus. This will give more students the experience of using computational thinking. It may not seem like much, but in my district, having the support of the district in giving us time to plan these units is a big ask.
In November, I had the wonderful experience of attending the Apple Leadership and Learning Academy. I learned so many great things in the break out sessions and the opening and closing sessions each day were inspiring. One thing that was not on the schedule was team building, but we truly formed as a team on this trip. There were eight educators from my district that attended this academy. Five of us were on the same flight so our team building really started at the airport. By choice, we ate all of our meals together. We also met and spent time with the professor who teaches our Early College High School students. This time, away from school and the pressures associated with work, gave us time to build a solid team.
In November, the Code Squad presented our experiences to the school board. We shared information about attending the Teacher Academy and hosting the Coding Camp as well as what was happening with coding in our district. Each member of the team shared an experience. We invited the school board to attend our upcoming Hour of Code event (the president of the school board took us up on this offer). We did this presentation to bring attention to the great things that are happening in our school and to garner support for further advancement of computer science in our schools.
In January, all members of the Code Squad gave our innovation plan pitch to the principals from each campus as well as the Assistant Superintendent of Academics and School Improvement. This was a joint pitch with each level taking turns. After the pitch we offered a question and answer session. That went so well that the principal of our newest school, an intermediate school, made the decision to require students take a technology course on his campus. This is not something that was previously considered.
This spring has been about creating significant learning environments. Though some of these concepts can be implemented right away, I believe it will be more effective to start out this fall with courses designed to create the significant learning environment. I will be working with other teachers in my campus cohort to design their courses with the specific intent of creating significant learning environments.
I had challenges that I had to overcome to participate fully in the Community Education Initiative. One of these challenges is I am not a classroom teacher. I am the instructional technology specialist on my campus. By not being in a classroom, I am not able to fully implement many of the ideas that require me to work with students. In my role I support the teachers on my campus and I was able to assist the other teachers in this program as they worked with our students. The middle school computer science teacher from this cohort is moving to the high school next year and I will be working closely with the new teacher, who is also a member of this cohort, so we can continue teaching students the things we have learned.
Another challenge I had was making the ePortfolio. I had never used WordPress, though I have used several other web development tools. I would become frustrated because I could not manipulate the webpage the way I wanted to. I even asked my son to help me get things set up because I just could not make sense of the program and he had used WordPress to create web pages. He helped me get it set up initially, but I was still frustrated when I tried to add posts. This is where grit and growth mindset come in to play. One day I just decided I was going to figure it out so that I could make the ePortfolio look like I wanted it to. I spent a weekend, instead of working on modules, learning the program and how to make it work for me. Since that weekend, I have been able to start new posts and organize my work without frustration. It is still not my favorite web creation tool, but I have learned how to make it work for me.
Overall, I have had a great experience and have grown as an educator. Whether my audience is students or teachers, the concepts I have learned can be applied. I will be working, along side my school cohort, to create signifiant learning environments and to provide authentic learning opportunities for our students. In addition, I will continue to promote coding in my school by assisting in the computer science classes. In addition, I will also continue to help plan and facilitate the annual summer coding camp as well as the Hour of Code events in district.
Sandra Negro 