How did you get into CS?

I’m a Resource Teacher for Instructional Technology in Howard County Public Schools, where we’re very fortunate to have Technology as a related art at the elementary level; students have Technology for 30 minutes or an hour every week, depending on their grade level. I moved out of a classroom into that teaching position when it first opened. My coordinator and I did a lot of technology integration in that role, and as technology advanced we started adding in more coding and other related activities. We felt that this was a great place for us to ensure that all students got some type of access to computer science. My work as a Resource Teacher led me to dive deeper into coding and CS at the elementary level; I'm a very mathematical person and love puzzles, so it was right up my alley. We’ve been working to create curriculum for about 5 years now, and all Howard County students in pre-K through 5th grade have been getting about 15 hours of CS instruction over the course of each school year through our instructional technology classes since before the pandemic. 

What are some successes and challenges you’ve experienced in CS?

I’m fortunate to have a very forward-thinking coordinator with an awareness of both what we need at the present and to be looking ahead towards, so we’ve been an early adopter of new things. We started with computer science, and are now starting to bring AI into our curriculum. So while I really haven't had many obstacles getting into computer science myself, a challenge we've been facing in implementation is how to bring CS to our multilingual learners and other marginalized populations. We have a lot of regional programs in our district- Upper Learners, Primary Learners, ALS- and our Tech teachers are struggling with how to bring students who aren’t ready to code in Scratch into what they're currently doing in the classroom. It’s important to figure out developmentally appropriate ways for all students to be able to engage in CS, so we've been doing a lot of work with our Special Ed department to make things accessible for our students with higher instructional needs.

The other big challenge is middle school. We do all this great work with computer science in pre-K through 5, but then kids go to middle school and it's like a black hole; there’s almost nothing. I believe there's an 8th grade course that most students take, but there's no real CS pathway option through middle school. There’s a lot of overlap or competition in the scheduling with band, strings, and languages, and parents are prioritizing languages and music since they know that's something that their children need to have going into college and CS ends up getting put off until high school. We're trying to keep that momentum going and help bring up the number of students that are already involved in CS as they enter high school by embedding it into the existing middle school curriculum, continuing to bring in bits of CS throughout the year, like our Hour of Code activities in December.

What do you find compelling about computer science?

I feel like so many jobs now have some element of computer science in them. Look at the medical field- my mom had an operation last year and they used a robot arm to actually physically do the surgery. CS is what  makes that work. It’s really helpful for kids to have a basic understanding of what CS is, how it works, the thinking behind it, the way that it’s structured, before they get out into the job market. Even auto mechanics and other trade jobs now have elements of coding in them. As a teacher, I didn't study coding in college at all, but here I am in Canvas using HTML to make my pages look the way that I want  because I can't do it using just the editing toolbar. We need to make sure that our students understand the basics of CS- not just for jobs, but because it helps them in so many other ways. It helps them in math and in writing; it helps their cognitive abilities and problem solving skills, and with learning how to work collaboratively in groups. There are just so many benefits within structured education and beyond.

What are you currently working on? What are you excited about/looking forward to?

Our office is currently spending a lot of time on working more with artificial intelligence. We have an intern from River Hill High School who has been really helpful with this; AI is his passion, he wants to pursue it as a career, so he's been working with us to vet some of the curricula we've created and also to help us create more. We worked over the summer on the curriculum for grades 2-5. There’s a few short lessons in each of those grades covering what AI is, bias in AI, and creativity AI; those are the three topics that we focused on as a starting place. AI is going to become more prevalent in everyday life, so we want kids to understand what it is, how it can be helpful, and also what they need to think about when interacting with it. We also added in some AI components in our Hour of Code activities for middle school; they're also going to engage in one hour of AI in addition to the original coding part, which we're really excited about. We're looking at other ways that we can bring AI into our existing middle school curriculum and integrate it where it naturally fits- in our sixth grade Digital Citizenship course, plus looking to also add it into Foundations of Technology or Intro to Computer Science. I'm looking forward to seeing how this project comes together this school year.

Any advice or resources?

Our curriculum at Howard County is completely open source, so it’s publicly available on the web. What we have so far for artificial intelligence is already there; the rest of it will be published in February. Those are great resources that I'm more than happy to share. People can take them, review, and use them as needed. (https://hcpss.instructure.com/courses/121 - Select link to grade level in left navigation > scope and sequence)

I'm also involved in CSTA Maryland and was elected secretary for this coming school year, which is a new role for me; I was the Elementary Member at Large the past two years. It's been really a great organization to be part of, to get ideas from and collaborate with others in, and I find it to be a great resource. They have a yearly national conference, and I feel like in both times that I've gone I've gotten more out of it than other similar events I've attended. I've walked away with lots of ideas that I can put into my classroom and curriculum and share with my teachers.

As far as advice and suggestions, I think it's important to stay on top of what's going on in the world, to be open-minded, and to continue thinking about how we can leverage CS to enrich the instruction of our students and help them grow as learners. We need to make an effort to engage students- especially girls and people of color- so CS can continue to grow and diversify as a field.