Mastery, Time, and the Joy of Teaching
Reengaging a student after a year on an AP-CSP related Python Project
Summary, TL;DR, Breakdown
I think some students could master content with more support
I’m inspired by the work I get to do with MS TEALS
This is my second year teaching Computer Science at the High School level. I teach through Microsoft’s TEALS program, in support of a teacher in Jacksonville, Florida.
One of my observations and anxieties from last year’s Intro to Programming (in Python) class was: very few of our students actually appeared to master the material. I think there was one that did, and they seemed naturally gifted and driven. Many of the others did well on exercises and test questions. When I say mastery, I’m talking - getting to the depths of Bloom’s Taxonomy or whatever the latest incarnation is: being able to break down a problem in different ways to use different tools.
On the other hand, I remember the moment of explosive, joyful, glorious insight when another student figured out a for loop. All I did was ask questions. They did the work.
I was back with that student today — a year later. Let’s call them Frodo — because that will be fun. Last year, Frodo started making a game. That’s where they used the for loop. Over the summer, Frodo forgot some of the details. Frodo still knew the syntax, but didn’t know when or how to apply it.
Frodo decided to practice their AP Computer Science Principles, create performance task, retaking up the game. They started strong, but got bogged down in some of the thinking. They were told to use a collection — a list in the native Python libs or a Group in the CMU CS Academy Python shape library. This was part of the rubric and they approached the game, not from the problems they were solving, but from the rubric.
Without fluency, I could see this was really tough for the student. They persisted.
One of the amazing amazing amazing things about TEALS for me and Frodo, is that I could spend extended time with them. 4 hours in total on the game. This luxury of time — no, this essential time…
I’m going to assert: as a father, I have leaned the **** into giving my kids my time. As a teacher, I can see that time is essential. The failures of the teaching profession have as much to do with overloading teachers as any other stress. Time is more valuable than money. Time is more valuable than land. And I have never felt that time spent truly relating to a caring human being is wasted.
The time with this student has been so meaningful.
Today, they really got it, again.
They pulled the for loop out when they needed it. Not because the rubric said they had to, but because they had just made a collection and they were iterating to pull out a single object and test to see if it was under where they had just clicked.
Magic.
I felt pride. Pride in this student who was not my own child. Pride in myself that I think the student may be able to do this on their own soon, and I had been a huge part of that. The curriculums out there can’t see the challenges a student is struggling with. The students are building their ability to learn and problem solve and…
Think.
The curriculums can’t teach a student how to think. They don’t even agree on what “computational thinking,” is, much less “thinking.”