EppsNet Archive: Teachers

Teach Computer Science: No Experience Required?

by  on The Programmer
 

I saw this header on a site called Experience CS: At the risk of repeating myself, this is why CS education is so lousy: the assumption that computer science can be taught by people with no experience. How can you teach anything confidently if you have no experience? I can’t think of anything to plug in there in place of “computer science” and have it make sense. Teach physics confidently, no experience needed Teach piano lessons confidently, no experience needed I know what they mean in the case of computer science is that you can confidently point students to an online curriculum where they can try to learn computer science on their own, but that’s not teaching. What if a student needs help and asks you a question? Ah, there’s the rub! Where’s your confidence now? Thus spoke The Programmer Read more →

How Do You Fix Schools?

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Given that 40 percent of American fourth graders have less than basic reading skills, and only 26 percent of 12th graders are considered proficient in math, you’d think that there wasn’t much on the mind of teachers other than the best ways to teach reading and math. WE DON’T HAVE TIME FOR THAT! WE’VE GOT TO FIGHT TRUMP! Among the initiatives approved at the latest annual gathering of the NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union: $3,500 to “defend democracy against Trump’s embrace of fascism by using the term facism [sic] in NEA materials to correctly characterize Donald Trump’s program and actions.” Even the teachers can’t spell. What a horror show. Read more →

I Don’t Have Much of Anything Good to Say About AP Computer Science Principles

by  on The Programmer
 

AP’s Newest Computer Science Course Has Attracted More Diverse Students — edweek.org More diverse than what, you ask? Probably more diverse than AP Computer Science A. AP Computer Science Principles (AP CSP) was launched in the 2016-17 school year, aiming to bring more Black, Latino, and female students into computing. AP CSP is more introductory and contains less technical content. AP CSA teaches object-oriented programming via hands-on coding in Java. I don’t often hear something so openly condescending and insulting as that the only way to bring black/brown/female students into computer science is via a dumbed-down curriculum. Get them into CSA like everyone else. Here are some numbers on the AP CSP exam score distribution. Not only is the percentage of students scoring a 5 on the AP CSP test significantly lower than any other math or computer science test, it’s one of the lowest percentages on any AP test.… Read more →

What’s Going On in Delaware?

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BREAKING: A former Delaware teachers union president cut off his friends and family because they voted for Trump. He wrote them a letter right before Christmas and published it in the state's largest news outlet He was forced to resign as union president in 2018 Buckle up ?? — Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) December 26, 2024 This may be the thread of the year. As noted, the teacher was forced to resign in 2018, the reason being the discovery of some of his past tweets, including one calling then-Delaware Gov. Ruth Ann Minner a “Butch Bitch” and wondering whether a video of “chocolate, caramel and vanilla brothas” gang-raping Minner would boost her poll numbers, another suggesting that “blowing all the Muslims up” perhaps isn’t such a bad idea, and one suggesting a child molester is justified if his wife is a “stank-ugly ho.” There’s a lot more… Read more →

International Women’s Day 2024

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Happy International Women’s Day 2024! (Belated — I meant to post this yesterday.) So many girls and women who’ve been a joy to work with as students, colleagues, teachers, mentors. I wish I could relive every moment with you. If you think you may be in that group, you probably are. If you’re not sure, message me and I’ll tell you. 🙂 I think I remember women better because there haven’t been as many of them. I work in software engineering. Women are underrepresented in software engineering. You may have heard. Women and men are different so it doesn’t seem surprising that they choose to do different things with their lives. Software engineering has been a good career for me because I like solving problems and building things, so I’ve been able to make a living doing, for the most part, things that I like and things that (I think)… Read more →

National Math and Reading Scores are Plunging

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National math and reading scores are plunging. In the new educational philosophy, test scores are just a racist measure of racist things. Parents who are pro–standardized testing are far-right hate groups. Obviously closing schools for years was really bad. You can see the scores drop off a cliff after 2020. But overall, the scores are actually lower than they were 40 years ago. We’ve made no progress in educating kids since 1980. There was progress till slightly after 2010 and then . . . What has happened in that time? I bet deciding that math and reading are racist didn’t help. And teachers being primarily tasked with gender-discovery journeys also did not improve scores. Midwestern public school teachers are trading tips on how to transition kids without telling parents. (I don’t know why these stories are only covered in non-US media.) Having teachers paint your son’s nails does not improve… Read more →

Far-Right ‘Moms for Liberty’ is a Hate Group?

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Moms for Liberty, the far-right parental group known for protesting at school board meetings, has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group” for the first time ever. — msn.com “Far-right” is an empty phrase assigned to, as far as I can tell, people who do not subscribe to neoliberal orthodoxy and who question U.S. institutions of power, like government and teachers unions. And the lead paragraph, quoted above, indicates that “protesting at school board meetings,” which is actually a right protected by the Constitution of the United States, will earn you an SPLC designation as a “hate group.” The SPLC also labeled 11 other “right-wing ‘parents’ rights’” groups as extremist groups. The use of quotes in the story is noteworthy. The author has scare-quoted “parents’ rights” and labeled the parents’ rights groups en masse as right-wing, as though the idea that parents have rights is… Read more →

2 + 2 = White Supremacy

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2 + 2 = White Supremacy: How Woke Ideologues Corrupted Canada’s Math Curriculum — nationalreview.com White supremacy? Wasn’t arithmetic invented by the Babylonians? Were Babylonians white? How great a threat is white supremacy in Canada? I’m thinking not much since when I’ve been in Canada, I didn’t see anything but white people and a few Asians. From the above-linked article: Two plus two no longer equals four, according to members of the Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association (OMCA), who consider the equation to be a white-supremacist dog whistle instead of a basic mathematical truth. According to a webinar created by OMCA president Jason To, proponents of math’s political neutrality who use the phrasing “2 + 2 = 4” are engaged in an act of “Covert White Supremacy.” Former OMCA president Heather Theijsmeijer, who originally publicized the webinar, pointed to commentary by Laurie Rubel, an associate professor of mathematics education, explaining that… Read more →

Mirrors and Mirror Holders

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Inviting Chaya Raichik, the woman behind #LibsofTikTok, to CPAC is "a gesture of contempt towards every teacher, every medical provider, and every other American who cares about making the world a kinder and safer place,” @AriDrennen told me.https://t.co/4ZzMJXEm8T — David Gilbert (@daithaigilbert) March 1, 2023 Doesn’t LibsOfTikTok just repost other people’s videos? It holds a mirror up to people who don’t like what they see and all they can think of to do is to hate mirrors and the people who hold them. As I post this, the tweet is getting ratioed at more than a 10-1 clip. I’d like to think this means that many people are getting as sick as I am of this “I hate you because you’re not as kind as I am” mental malfunction. Also sick of “People who cannot be expected to parrot opinions I hold myself should not be allowed to speak.” Now… Read more →

That is a Load of Educational Malarkey!

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I think every kid, in every zip code, in every state should have access to every education opportunity possible. I guess, for some, that isn’t the consensus view. https://t.co/d1FAeWwKv1 — President Biden (@POTUS) February 17, 2023 That is a load of malarkey! I mean, the bullshit meter just totally pegged. That is not what he thinks and anyone who knows even a little about politics knows that is not what he thinks. What he thinks is that every kid in every zip code should attend the public schools that they’re assigned to based on where they live. And if those schools are hopeless trash fires, the kids should attend those schools anyway. Teachers unions and the Democratic party are co-dependent. The unions, in addition to providing financial support, are the foot soldiers of the party. In exchange, no Democrat will ever — and I mean never ever — support school… Read more →

Why Must Teachers Buy Their Own Supplies?

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That's mismanagement. Avg per pupil spending in US is almost $15K. 30 kids in a class would be $450K. Deduct the teacher's salary and there should be enough left for supplies. P.S. Non sequiturs and false choice fallacies are not REQUIRED for every post. https://t.co/PMisLtoe4a — Paul Epps (@paulepps) December 21, 2022 Read more →

See You in Hell, Educators

by  on Satan
 

[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] Greetings mortals! Even though an alarmingly high percentage of Americans think the sun orbits the earth, can’t find the Pacific Ocean on a map, half the residents of Detroit can’t read, rather than teach basic literacy, science or geography, K-12 public school teachers in the U.S. will be teaching “expanding” gender identities and “evolving” sexual orientations. This instruction will be informed by the National Sex Ed Standards: Core Content and Skills, K-12 (Second Edition) I included a link to it because you will not believe me when I tell you what’s in it. For example: BY THE END OF THE 5TH GRADE, STUDENTS SHOULD BE ABLE TO: Distinguish between sex assigned at birth and gender identity and explain how they may or may not differ. Define and explain differences between cisgender, transgender, gender nonbinary, gender expansive,… Read more →

The Interests of Schoolchildren

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On Twitter, a Chicago Teachers Union leader rallied teachers to refuse to go back to the classroom to 'stay safe.' On Instagram, on the same day, she posted pictures poolside in Puerto Rico. https://t.co/eiC4CqH1k2 @WGNNews — Ben Bradley (@BenBradleyTV) January 1, 2021 Oopsie! Bad timing! As Albert Shanker — former president of the United Federation of Teachers (1964-1984) and the American Federation of Teachers (1974-1997) — used to say: “When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren.” Read more →

Lowering the Trauma Bar

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More than a hundred faculty members at Ball State University signed a letter to the student newspaper saying, in part, “We support our students of color as they deal with the trauma of these events and navigate its fallout.” The traumatic events, as it turns out, are that a marketing professor asked a black student to move to a different seat in the classroom and the student declined to move. First, why make a racial thing out of it? If my son, who is not black, were asked by a college professor to move seats, my hope is that he would would move seats, and if he didn’t want to move, he’d move anyway. Certainly there’s room for personal interpretation, but to me a traumatic event would be, say, losing a limb, or witnessing a murder. Being asked to move seats in a classroom is not a traumatic event. I… Read more →

Teaching Computer Science: Priorities

by  on The Programmer
 

When schoolchildren start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of schoolchildren. — Albert Shanker, President of the United Federation of Teachers (1964-1984) and President of the American Federation of Teachers (1974-1997) It’s a problem in my profession that the number of schools that want to teach computer science far exceeds the number of computer science majors who want to teach computer science. The opportunity cost is too high. Computer science majors can earn a lot more working as software engineers than working as teachers. I volunteer a couple mornings a week to help with computer science instruction at a local high school. This school has a teacher, originally hired as a math teacher, who must be well into her fourth decade of teaching.  She now teaches computer science classes — poorly, but she teaches them. Because of her professional longevity, she makes a six-figure income with… Read more →

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