Two years ago, I saw that my CS courses — both my regular and my PreAP were broke. I wasn’t enjoying teaching them, and I had a horrible passing rate.
The first thing I looked at, was who was successful in the course and who wasn’t. I was lucky, it was 9th graders. I also looked at who I was having to deal with the most, discipline wise, and again it was 9th graders.
I was also lucky to have a support associate principal of instruction who saw the same demographic problems as I was. We took a big leap of faith, and took CS off the 9th grade choice sheets. That meant I had NO enrollment this year. Everyone who wanted to take CS, was in the building for the most part.
I then had three class periods free and at the time she was wiling to let me have them off to work on teacher tech stuff, but between getting a new principal and the economy, I did not want to be seen not contributing to student learning. I gave her three choices and she picked Math Remediation.
Man, that’s been tough. Kids who don’t like math, don’t like computers and don’t like following instructions. The good news is that I’ve been able to help those kids who haven’t been able to graduate because of the Math TAKS. I have also identified one child as needing hearing assistance. There have been some kids that I have helped, but I would like to help all. One of my beagles did teach me that there are some things you just can’t teach — like swimming to beagles.
On the other hand, I have two classes filled with kids I really love to be with. My first period is so cool. I had a meeting this morning on the opposite side of campus, and I wasn’t worried a bit. Left it 5 minutes before the bell, and they were all in the room working when I got here 10 minutes later.
I have also changed up my PreAP curriculum and I am working on changing that even more. I’ve incorporated C# and XNA. Next year I am going to have to find a way to blend it better as the opportunity didn’t come up until before Christmas. Unfortunately we have a district final that is heavily Java.
I’m REALLY looking forward to next year.