100 days journal - to keep yourself accountable
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https://medium.com/@robmuh/what-an-amazing-article-76fa7dbb7e29#b6b2
Thank-you, Rob Muhlestein. You have, very succinctly, summed up a problem that I have been trying to wrap my head around for a while. I am a High School teacher, and, when I tell people that, the most common question I get next is, “What do you teach?” And here I am stumped. My usual response is something along the lines of:
“Well, if it has a computer attached to it, I teach it.”
To clarify, in a given year, I will teach Graphics, Animation + Game Design, Introduction to Computers, and Programming. This year, I am also teaching Junior STEM (with a heavy focus on Arduino programming) and trying out the new AP Computer Science Principles course (theoretically, alongside/in place of Programming this year).
I have taught Programming with Python in past years, teaching myself enough to stay ahead of my students. What made Programming frustrating to teach wasn’t the language or the concepts, it was the difficulty in finding and setting up software that would work both in the School’s computer lab and in the Students’ homes.
Over the last half-decade, with the advent of online coding environments, I have been able to spend more of my time teaching a language and relatively little on troubleshooting software/hardware problems. The downside, I now realize, is that I have moved to teaching far more “Coding” than “Programming”.
Don’t get me wrong; teaching Coding has been a good thing. It has seriously extended my reach. Every class I teach does some Coding, as opposed to the one class of Programming I used to teach when I started. But, as you brilliantly point out:
Python and Web are perfect complimentary paths, one generally back end with mostly a traditional paradigm (loops do not kill you), and Web for front end with its asynchronous, event-driven, approach (where loops destroy you). — Rob Muhlestein
So, thanks again. Your article has provided the nudge I needed to bring my Python skills to the next level, and a paradigm I can use to re-introduce it in my classroom.