Prospective Teachers

Prospective Teachers Should Strive To:

• • Be comfortable with CS as an ever changing field

  • Be able to read professional papers in CS

  • Have confidence in their abilities

  • Understand the connections between CS and other fields

  • Have a broad understand of the field

  • Appreciate the many different styles of problem solving that CS requires

  • Comfortable with multiple programming paradigms

  • Grasp connections between different areas of CS

  • Understand the history of CS

  • Know about important figures in CS

  • Understand how to prepare and create lessons

  • Be familiar with national standards in CS

  • Be familiar with curriculum used around the world for CS

  • Be familiar with online resources

  • Know many strategies for assessment of students

  • Understand the learning process

  • Understand common trouble spots in different areas of the curriculum

  • Be able to differentiate learning for different learning styles

Important places to start:

• • Join CSTA and the CSTA listserv

  • Join SIGCSE and attend the SIGCSE conference http://www.sigcse.org/

  • Join ACM

  • Get connected to other current teachers and ask for advice and help

  • Get a Bachelors Degree and a Masters if possible in a computing or related discipline

Where to get training?

• • Google Certified Teachers

  • Google Teacher Academy

  • CS4HS- http://cs4hs.stanford.edu/

  • Apple Distinguished Educators

  • Bard Teacher Masters Program

Certification:

    Certification depends on each state. You don't need certification to teach at a private school but for public schools you need a certification and right now most states don't certify in computer science. So in order to teach computer science you will have to check your local state laws about where computer science is categorized and which area to get certified in. A lot of schools will often want you to teach CS and something else so consider teaching math or science classes as well if you can.

Ways to Get CS Added:

• • Get half a class added if you can (better than nothing)

  • Leverage that states are using computers for testing and that a better understanding of computers might improve students scores

  • Check out NCWITS ways to convince administration : ncwit.org/schools

You got the job! Now what?

• • Make students and parents of aware of what CS is and its benefits

  • Create your own website with resources and curriculum ideas you have (Let me know so I can link it!)

  • Consider what you want students to get out of your program

    • What language to teach is always an important question to consider first.

  • Remember its not about making everyone a computer scientist but making them capable of making CS apply to whatever they set out to do

  • Video record yourself teaching so that you can reflect on your teaching and improve