The school year is quickly approaching but learning has already begun for educators. As New York ramps up new computer science learning standards, some teachers are preparing to teach new classes for the first time.
The college students haven’t arrived yet on the Siena College campus in Loudonville, but a classroom is packed with dozens of high school teachers.
As New York continues its rollout of computer science standards adopted in 2020, Siena College computer science professor Jim Matthews says teachers across the state need to be ready to educate students entering eight grade.
“There's a New York state timeline that says ‘those students should meet all of these standards by the time they graduate from high school.’ So high school should be ready for them and they shouldn't be doing this for their other high school students too, right? I always, say to people, and especially school administrators, we're helping you get your curriculum into the 1990s,” said Matthews.
Matthews said half of American high schools don’t offer any computer science classes.
As technology advances and computer science becomes a more valuable skillset, many teachers are receiving training they didn’t get in high school or college themselves.
Maureen Conway, an adjunct professor at Siena and teacher at the Mohonasen Central School District in Schenectady County, has been a state certified math teacher for 23 years, and has been teaching computer science at Mohonasen for eight years.
Conway says training for CS was a challenge at first.
“Math is very structured. So, you had to like adjust away from being so structured, when you're in the introduction course. You have to meet the kids where they are, you want to keep them engaged, you don't want them intimidated by which computer science can be like,” said Conway.
Conway was among Mohonasen instructors who benefitted from a program where Siena provided the ramp-up to teaching computer science.
“They trained us, they gave us all the material, they set us up for success so our students could have dual enrollment college credit by taking this computer science class and then move on to college level when they graduated. My second reason was my own children went into STEM college programs and their high school experience did not have any computer science. And it was more challenging. So, I realized it needs to start in the high school,” said Conway.
The program at Siena to train high school teachers has been in effect for more than five years. An experienced math instructor, Heather Thibodaux of Mamaroneck High School is getting a crash course.
“I've been teaching for 20 years. So, it was definitely a necessity for me to have a curriculum that Siena has developed as well as having the support from the teachers here at Siena, as well as being able to talk to Matt about just like, what do you do in your classroom?” said Thibodaux.
Matt Fowler, a math teacher at Valley Central High School in Orange County, has been teaching computer science for five years. He likes how Siena’s program brings experienced and new CS teachers together.
“If you're teaching computer science in schools now, because there's not many of us, you're often on an island at your own district, there's not somebody in your building you can go to. So, this provides us a community of teachers that we can talk to, ‘Hey, how did you teach this? Hey, my kids were struggling with this. Is there another avenue that worked well for you?’ said Fowler.
Only about 5 percent of students in New York currently take computer science classes. While the new statewide standards aim to boost those numbers, Robin Flatland, a Siena computer science professor, says students are the best advertisers.
“If you can get students to go to other classes and talk with their friends about taking the computer science class, that's a good way. We also like to display their work. You know, in our intro course, it's about multimedia. And they're creating personal images, which are quite nice pieces of art. They look like art but they program them to create them and so we can we can share those and advertise those and makes people wonder what are they doing in that class?” said Flatland.
