Individualized Learning Without Grades with Sofía De Jesús

In this interview with Sofía De Jesús, we discuss Sofía’s book (Applied Computational Thinking with Python: Design algorithmic solutions for complex and challenging real-world problems), the importance of bringing your full self into the classroom, designing for equity and inclusion, working with individuals one-on-one rather than teaching to group averages, problematizing grades in education, collaborating with educators, and much more.

  • Welcome back to another episode of the

    CSK8 podcast my name is jared o'leary

    each week of this podcast alternates

    between an episode where i unpack some

    scholarship and

    an interview this week's particular

    episode is an interview with sophia

    dejesus

    and in this interview we discuss

    sophia's book which is titled applied

    computational thinking with python

    design algorithmic solutions for complex

    and challenging real world problems

    we also discuss the importance of

    bringing your full self into the

    classroom

    designing for equity and inclusion

    working with individuals one-on-one

    rather than teaching to group averages

    problematizing grades in education

    collaborating with educators and so much

    more

    as always you can find links to what we

    talked about in the show notes which you

    can find at jaredlery.com or by

    clicking on the link in the show

    description in the app that you're

    listening to this on

    and with that we will now begin with an

    introduction by sophia

    hi i'm sofia jesus i am currently a

    middle school computational thinking

    teacher

    and that means that i teach everything

    from web design

    circuits game design python courses

    and such for sixth seventh and eighth

    grade and i do teach all three grades

    currently teaching seven different

    electives per trimester which is a lot

    but i do

    love to offer different kinds of things

    to students so that's what i

    do i've also been published in the last

    year so i published a book applied

    computational thinking with python with

    pact publishing and my co-author

    dairy martinez so we have that book out

    and it's just a

    book for anybody who's learning python

    or has learned python but is having

    difficulty with

    applications so it's full of examples

    and

    what do we do when so it's mostly about

    the process and then

    what python language we would use to

    solve that particular problem which is

    an exciting thing

    because it is written by two latinas i'm

    puerto rican and irene is dominican so

    we had a lot of fun getting to work on

    that buck so that's me i also work in

    curriculum i have a part-time gig where

    i

    am currently helping spread some

    really amazing curriculum for carnegie

    mellon in spanish

    mostly that's my role and i will be

    joining them

    at the beginning of july as a full-time

    employee there

    i'm curious is your book is it for

    students or is it for teachers and how

    to teach students

    or both it's kind of a little bit of

    both one of the things that i say

    often and i've had a couple interviews

    about this is that

    i had a lot of trouble learning

    programming in general

    and get stuck because i could go through

    the courses and ace the courses

    but when it came to now how do i apply

    this

    i always gave up because i was like i

    don't understand any of this

    i understand the loops i understand what

    this means

    i just don't know how to then create a

    game or

    solve a problem for a client or some

    similar thing and

    i realized that i started really loving

    programming

    when i had an emergency for example so i

    would be working with a client in

    educational publishing and they'd need

    something

    and you know our contractors were in

    india and they were sleeping at the time

    and we needed it in five minutes

    i would have to like look at our coding

    try to fix it myself

    for some reason things started clicking

    when it was really

    when i was stressed first of all but

    also when it was applied

    and so i've always been really great

    when

    i'm in a really tight time frame but it

    was one of those things where

    things made sense when i had to apply it

    so i had already learned quite a few

    different languages

    didn't use them too much and i realized

    it's

    important to not just say like hey this

    is a loop and this is how it works and

    let's talk about it using a couple

    numbers which is pretty much every book

    out there

    it'll show you how to iterate while i is

    less than 100 and then do something

    so so i feel like that was what i wanted

    to do and i think that's helpful for

    anybody starting up

    and i think that's helpful for anybody

    who's already been in the industry

    and it's also helpful for teachers you

    can tell it was written by a teacher i

    would say

    so i think it's for everybody and it

    does have samples from

    let's write a program that will tell you

    like how much a pizza would cost

    based on the ingredients you have to

    let's build a chat bot

    or analyze a historical document or

    there's machine learning and i'm not an

    expert in machine learning dareen is

    so she helped me out those two chapters

    we wrote together

    mostly because i don't know the code but

    i do know how to write

    so she taught me a lot about the code

    and i

    helped out with beefing up some of the

    text in there

    and of course now i know quite a bit

    about it because

    inevitably you learn something while

    you're writing and then she and i also

    wrote the two last chapters which are

    applications only so there's 15 or 16

    problems

    there are just applications it's this is

    the problem let's solve it now

    using what we've learned in the book so

    that was fun and yes it would be for

    everybody

    cool how did you get into computer

    science education

    by accident i was a math teacher

    so i've been in industry too so i always

    say

    my first program was written on a ti

    calculator when i was a senior in high

    school and that was 1997.

    so it had a programming button and i

    wanted to know what it did so i wrote a

    program to solve a system of equations

    and that was my first program i did not

    own a computer until after i graduated

    college

    so there's also that and we didn't have

    a lot of computers

    at the school where i used to attend it

    was a really great college prep school

    but this is prior to 2000 in puerto rico

    we did not have a computer lab yet our

    tech class was how to type

    so it was a typing class not an actual

    computer class but

    i spent quite a bit of my time in

    college going to the computer lab

    because i just wanted to learn what was

    out there and what's the internet and

    what's going on so i learned to program

    because of need i guess not because of

    school or whatever

    during my statistics course it was a mix

    of programming and statistics in college

    but that was

    really not enough but as a math teacher

    when a school needs a computer science

    teacher and they don't have any and

    they're just offering one

    they grab a math teacher so when i went

    back to teaching

    which i did in 2012 a couple years later

    somebody said like hey by the way you're

    going to be teaching a computer science

    course

    you're saying uh what

    so i started just looking at like what's

    out there and learning it

    and taking as many classes as i possibly

    could of the free ones college offered

    everything i started teaching and i

    started falling in love with it i became

    a

    steam coordinator at that school that

    particular school

    and i started learning i don't know

    everything i possibly could about

    applications and as a math teacher

    we're very married to a there's a

    curriculum and a test you have to take

    and therefore everything's like

    super square right which i didn't

    appreciate and i started shifting a

    whole lot of how i did things

    when i started teaching again and i

    always say that

    it's because teaching is like when you

    gain weight you gain it slowly and you

    don't necessarily notice it

    until somebody takes a picture of you

    and you're like oh wait that's me

    and so a lot of teachers don't notice

    the changes that are happening

    while they're happening because it's

    slowly but surely every year something

    changes

    and technology's been like that but i

    left teaching in 2005 and came back in

    i left a blackboard and chalk

    classroom and i came back to a smart

    board and

    students having computers on them at all

    times

    so i was like what i used to do doesn't

    fit so what do i do now

    and i started noticing that students

    needed more from me than

    me teaching the content so when i

    started teaching math and computer

    science stuff

    you know robotics and all that stuff i

    realized ooh i could

    take a lot of what i'm doing in the

    steam classroom and we do steam because

    it was science technology engineering

    arts and math

    so it's stem steam some people have

    medicine at the end whatever

    but everything i was doing and the

    application seemed to

    match what my students need more and so

    i started changing the way that i taught

    math as well

    instead of focusing on what does my

    class need it was what does that student

    need

    and that's a lot of where my

    explorations into diversity inclusion

    justice equity that work started

    so yeah so i ended up having to change a

    lot of what i did

    and learning more about quite a few

    different things

    not just programming when i started in

    the programming classroom

    now feel free to answer the next

    question like either as a student or as

    a teacher

    but can you tell me a story about an

    experience in education that continues

    to impact you today there's

    two things to this so as a student

    myself

    one of the things that i remember was i

    was a sophomore in high school and my

    english teacher

    was trying to get me to slow down and we

    had to memorize

    something shakespeare you know i was

    saying my part and when i was done

    she looks at me and she goes you realize

    you skipped

    like every three lines and i was like no

    i didn't

    i know the lines and she's like okay so

    give me these but say it's lower and

    when i did i wouldn't skip the lines and

    she said you got to remember that your

    brain moves faster than your mouth does

    so slow down and that to this day

    i still do i have to just slow myself

    down to kind of

    what am i thinking am i moving ahead too

    fast and did i skip something i wanted

    to say

    happens a lot and i tell my students

    that a lot

    that they have to slow down that there's

    no need to rush the process

    for whatever that process is i don't

    have to just

    get that done it's how do i get to that

    finish line

    so as a student that probably the most

    impactful thing a teacher ever told me

    because i was that student that i wanted

    to be the first to finish the test

    the first to get whatever i was very

    competitive

    and i want to be the first to whatever

    and i've stopped doing that a lot and

    i've asked my students to not

    focus on that because i don't want them

    to focus

    about their growth as compared to others

    i want them to focus on their growth as

    compared to their own growth

    so if you were really good at whatever

    how do i get better

    right how do you the individual get

    better

    because if you compete against yourself

    you're always going to get better

    if you compete against others you're

    selling yourself short

    always because you're trying to focus on

    the wrong things

    you're not really tapping into your best

    potential

    in the areas that are best for you

    you're just focusing on the wrong person

    so those are things that i like to tell

    my students but

    in terms of impactful as a teacher in

    the area of equity

    if you're closed down you're not doing

    the work

    and one of the things that i remember a

    student a senior

    we had a professional development day we

    were all in tables

    and there was a student member and then

    faculty right

    and we were talking and one of the

    things that i said was i'm a private

    person i don't want to share

    anything about my life i'm here to teach

    that senior said to me

    but that's not what we need from you and

    i asked her i was like but why

    and she said because if you don't bring

    your full

    self then i can't either and it's not

    that we want to know about your private

    life or your love life that's not it

    it's about

    who are you it's about the books that

    you read it's about the music that you

    listen to it's

    and yes sometimes some personal stuff if

    you're comfortable with that but she

    said

    that a lot of the teachers at that

    school which was the truth

    only ever shared about the content and i

    remember just

    taking that home i remember thinking

    she's right but how do i open that up

    and so i started doing a lot of work

    reading a lot more about

    what others were doing and following

    more professional learning networks and

    social media

    and just exploring what that meant and

    what that meant for me

    and so the last i would say the last

    decade has been spent

    trying to build that so that i can be

    better for my students

    but also sharing that so that other

    professionals can also say

    that is important we can't just

    be there for content regardless of what

    age level you teach

    you cannot be in the school and be the

    best teacher you possibly can be if your

    only focus is content

    so i'm glad you brought up the student

    shouldn't compare each other

    one of the things that you mentioned in

    your recent session at the

    equity in action summit for csta is that

    students shouldn't compare

    themselves with other students i'm

    curious what makes you say that

    or even what led to that shift in your

    own competitive nature to thinking that

    students

    shouldn't focus on that in mathematics

    we

    expect that students have all had the

    same

    material so if you're in eighth grade

    algebra or ninth grade algebra

    you should know these things which is a

    lie nobody ever comes into the room with

    the same things

    teachers have the assumption that all my

    students must have these things and if

    you don't that's not my problem

    that's a really bad take i guess i

    wish i had explored that further sooner

    but when i started teaching programming

    i realized some of my students have been

    programming for quite a bit

    some of my students have been writing

    lines of code or have explored scratch

    for years and they're in sixth grade and

    yet

    some of my students may see their first

    line of code in my classroom

    they're all signed up for the same class

    if i teach that class to the high level

    i am not serving any other students if i

    teach that student to the base level

    those who are really excited about this

    will get bored and

    really start hating a topic that they

    might have loved

    before so i can't teach

    to the course i can't teach the content

    i can teach

    to the kids i can teach creating

    curriculum that addresses

    their needs individually and it is

    possible

    not necessarily the easiest thing and

    that's one of the reasons why

    i mentioned the ill-defined problem

    where you provide this

    broad idea of what it is that you want

    you know

    what topics you're going to be touching

    on so for example i have the alternate

    history project where

    students are going to explore something

    in history it can be sports music

    wars whatever they're going to choose

    two topics and they're going to create

    this game

    that's a choose your own adventure kind

    of game where they're going to explore

    if the real thing happened this is what

    goes next but what if it did it

    then that is an alternate route right so

    it's an alternate dystopian kind of

    thing but they have to research who was

    there who wasn't

    and i mentioned the what if prince was

    an actor

    and not a singer what happens to music

    and it's really interesting to think

    about because

    prince is somebody who's had quite a bit

    of influence in what comes next

    so if he's not there what happens to

    music are the same people going to be in

    music

    are the same people going to be inspired

    i don't know but that project

    will look very different depending on

    where my students came in

    so if i have a student who is a coder

    and has been doing it for years their

    final product

    might be a very polished game with many

    games for decision making and all of

    that

    which is phenomenal because they're

    going to have enough time

    you know if i give them three weeks

    they're going to use those three weeks

    very differently

    from the student who's just now writing

    their first line of code

    who's going to be teaching themselves

    and i'm going to be doing some mini

    tutorials

    but they're learning like how do i use a

    button and how do i add the backgrounds

    and how do i add the characters

    they're going to be focusing on

    something else at the end of the day

    they're all going to have practiced

    about

    statements conditionals they're all

    going to be looking at

    loops if they're using controllers so

    how do i make sure that my arrow always

    works or

    something like that they're gonna be

    looking at all of those things that i

    wanted

    even though the end result might be you

    know the difference between a stick

    figure drawing

    and a picasso it's not the same but

    they've met

    the brief and that's where i want them

    to be because

    i don't want the student you know who's

    just writing their first line of code to

    compare themselves with somebody who's

    been coding for four years

    that's what i mean i don't need them to

    be doing that they're gonna get there

    but they can't expect to learn four

    years of coding

    that that other person has in this one

    project

    and some students really do learn quick

    and they will be coding at that level

    but some students will take the whole

    entire year to create something that

    looks more polished

    but i don't want them to feel like less

    than their experience has to be about

    your next game is going to be better and

    that's where you need to focus

    and if you've already learned these

    things then you need to focus more maybe

    on character creation or whatever if

    it's a game design class

    so i work with my students individually

    and as i don't want to be intense about

    it either like this is what you are

    doing and forget about everybody else

    it's subtle it's the way that we give

    feedback to them it's the way that we

    prop them up when they're doing

    something great

    and it's continuous so i am looking at

    their computers as they're working and i

    call out something that's really cool on

    their screens hey

    this looks amazing great job on blah

    and it's not about that end grade

    because i

    refuse to give grades at this point but

    when i did give grades

    i also never would give back graded

    assignments even with math in my last

    years

    so the last years i taught math i would

    refrain from giving back some of the

    assignments because one of the things

    that i think

    affects students intensely is if i give

    back a paper with a whole lot of red

    marks

    they're not going to want to learn that

    again nor will they want to improve

    psychologically and subconsciously it

    kills a student

    they might start thinking like i'm no

    good at math or i'm not good at whatever

    and instead what i would do is i would

    look at my class as a whole

    and say you know if there's a lot of red

    marks for a lot of my students then

    maybe i didn't teach it correctly

    so i would talk to the kids and say hey

    let's do this again

    let's look at this again let's partner

    up and i would partner students with

    somebody who might have done better

    but i wouldn't tell them who did well

    and who didn't and we would talk more

    about like let's look at the content

    again and let's look at it a different

    way

    and and then at the very end i would say

    you need to trust me about your grades

    and if you have a question when the

    grades do come out

    then let me know i've only ever had two

    students actually come to me and say

    like i'm not sure about that grade

    and we would discuss it and see if there

    was a change and

    i once changed it and the other i didn't

    but it was very

    interesting that the conversations were

    a lot more about

    the content rather than the grade so

    instead of how can i get a grade is how

    do i understand this better i'm having

    trouble with

    so i try to teach my students to focus

    on the

    what am i learning rather than what am i

    getting

    and that's all about the individual

    process it's about where i

    am and how's my growth so if everybody

    is starting in a

    different place and working at their own

    pace to kind of

    grapple with these concepts and

    practices related to computer science

    and if you're not teaching to a group

    average or median

    or whatever and focusing on the content

    what does it look like

    walking into a classroom like if

    somebody were to step in there what

    would they

    see or hear or experience you know it's

    interesting because

    my classroom is active right now i'm

    talking pre-covered

    my classroom was a little loud but it

    was loud in the sense that everybody was

    always talking

    sharing but always about content so

    there's a lot of people who would stop

    by and just observe i used to teach in

    this room that felt

    a little bit like a fishbowl because one

    of the walls was

    complete glass and people would stop and

    just you know

    kind of laugh about the amount of

    activity in a small room

    and that's really what i wanted because

    my students will

    ask each other questions my students

    will go like oh i'm stuck on

    whatever and they'll say it out loud and

    either i'll help them or if i'm helping

    somebody else a classmate will

    in robotics there's no way to have a

    quiet robotics classroom so that was

    messy but my rooms are active

    and even now where mostly they're

    working

    by themselves instead of in groups

    unless

    you know they're working on

    collaborative tasks where they can code

    together etc

    i provide them with ways that they can

    chat so it doesn't get really crazy

    with the microphones and people being

    home and not etc

    it's still a very lively room and

    they're always on task and i can say

    that

    because i do have a system where i can

    see what they're doing on their

    computers

    and we do have a system where they have

    microphones because i'm teaching

    remotely they're in the classroom

    for the most part some of them are home

    the kind of hybrid

    really crazy covered world right now but

    it is a continuous kind of conversation

    and the way that i run a classroom is if

    there's a tutorial i have to give

    my students are not required to listen

    unless it's something that i know

    everybody needs so i might say like for

    the next

    minutes i'm going to be talking about

    these things

    if you need that content feel free to

    just tune in

    watch me follow along if you are

    completely sure you're okay with this

    and you just want to ignore me put your

    headphones on

    do whatever you need to because they're

    working ahead and they're working on

    something else or they've already

    learned that content so my room kind of

    just looks like that there's

    students talking to each other even

    while i'm teaching at class so that

    might look a little odd to some teachers

    but that's what it is i don't want

    students to have to be married to the

    idea of the teacher is talking

    because not everything i say is

    important to that particular student

    right and that understanding is there

    where i say

    ignore me but i'm also a flexible

    teacher i have a class for example that

    just started this trimester which was

    game design

    with scratch but some of my students in

    that class had just been taking game

    design with python

    and i had three or four of those

    students who said but i want to keep

    going with python

    so i have two options i can say no

    you must take game design with scratch

    or i can say like keep exploring python

    and we'll figure out

    alternate assignments which is what i

    did so now i'm basically running two

    classes in one classroom

    i made sure that my administrator was

    okay with that but that's

    the thing that i feel is different is

    that i listen to my kids and i

    ask for their feedback quite constantly

    and

    they'll give feedback on every project

    that we do

    i hated that one or i love that one they

    won't all agree

    and i will always say you know you have

    to give everything a chance

    and it's okay to hate something later

    but we won't all love the same projects

    so that one that you hate it is probably

    somebody else's favorite

    so we have to give things a chance to

    develop as we go because i won't make

    everybody happy every time of the day

    it just can't happen but those are the

    things that i think

    are different in my classroom is that

    because it is computer science and

    because there is

    such a variety of opinions about what

    that should look like

    i get to explore what my ideal classroom

    would have been like

    and i think that that's what i'm trying

    to give my students is an option to

    explore the things that they're

    interested in in as many ways as i

    possibly can

    and that's why the program that i built

    at this school

    one of the things that i've explained

    quite a bit to my administrators but

    also

    to other teachers is that i want a

    program that's flexible so that

    when i leave whoever comes in can change

    what classes are teaching

    but the philosophy is still there it's

    computational thinking it's how do i

    approach these problems

    but those classes don't need to be

    looking the same so if somebody comes in

    and they're like oh but i am

    so in love with like ai for middle

    school well then teach ai for middle

    school

    if you love cyber security then offer

    some electives in cyber security they

    don't need to teach the classes i taught

    at all it's a program that should fit

    with changing technologies programs

    curriculums

    and then people can just adjust and

    adapt as they come in

    and as the program grows and adds more

    teachers

    they can keep adding and changing it's

    more of a

    puzzle pieces to be put together rather

    than this is the curriculum and you must

    follow it because i don't believe in

    that

    yeah that all really resonates with like

    my own approach like in the fourth

    through eighth grade classes in

    particular that i previously worked with

    like

    if there were 30 kids in the class they

    could be working on 30 different

    projects

    they could work on ruby swift scratch

    javascript like several languages and

    platforms

    kids could go at their own pace they'd

    spend two weeks or two years on

    the same project totally up to them etc

    a lot of those rationales behind those

    design and pedagogical decisions i was

    making were

    centered around equity and knowing that

    that is something that is a huge part of

    what you do i'm curious could you like

    tease some of those out and

    maybe explain how some of those

    decisions were related to equity in your

    eyes

    the biggest one is that kids are

    individuals so that's where i start

    if my kid is an individual and i have to

    meet their needs

    i need to know that student so learning

    to know

    what they know where they're coming from

    what

    makes them tick is a big piece of this

    equity

    work so that i try to approach in as

    many different ways as i possibly can

    without making it

    so that they don't want to ever hear the

    word diversity again

    and i say that because it's not just

    students but teachers alike

    and i try to keep it as equity focused

    and as individual

    focused as i possibly can so some of my

    assignments will be like

    in this unit we've learned about

    loops and whatever now that you've

    taken all that in here is a creative

    task for you which

    the wording created task is from the

    carnegie mellon assignments but i use

    the same philosophy when i'm teaching

    other classes too

    where i will then say now you have to

    build something

    that centers around your favorite place

    to visit

    your favorite food or something about

    your culture or something about your

    favorite music

    something that talks to me about who you

    are and in that way

    i get to learn a little bit more about

    my students while they're also learning

    content in my room

    it also makes them think more about who

    am i

    actually and a lot of my students in

    some of the

    projects that i've done where for

    example they've created some

    art piece that is coded that is

    inspired by an artifact so something

    from history

    related to their own culture they have

    to do some research and they have to

    talk to their parents and they have to

    talk to their family members and they

    have to talk about

    you know this crazy assignment that my

    teacher gave me like i have to think

    about how i feel about

    all of that stuff and there's a lot of

    information that you can

    get from how the student approaches

    those projects where they're

    thinking about you know all to use in

    the kitchen

    may have been based on this i don't know

    african ceramic

    thing and i found that out now or

    you know the drums that i love from

    puerto rico well me personally

    that's something that comes from you

    know slavery and the slaves that were

    brought to puerto rico

    and how they were able to celebrate

    their own cultures

    to survive and we still use that music

    and those drums that were created

    so we all learn when we're exploring

    these types of assignments

    and in the end all they're doing is

    really coding it is not just coding so

    it's that whole piece of

    as i'm exploring this coded thing that

    i'm creating

    i got to explore my own history my

    culture

    and how that culture affects centuries

    of art and music and

    evolution from all of these things and

    so

    that's where i think we have so much

    we can do in our classrooms our

    curriculum doesn't have to be so

    square it can't be about those little

    loops of you know

    print hello world it's that whole thing

    that

    every book every programming language

    starts with that print

    or statement you know and why do we do

    that and why can't we

    teach content that explores things

    deeper

    that can be about the individual culture

    but it's also about your community

    so there's also projects that we can do

    in the community and understanding what

    the needs of

    my building my community my

    groups are who is part of my community

    what's the demographic breakdown of

    where i

    am is that represented how do i explore

    that in a project

    that's where i want my students to be

    and that's where i think we need to go

    because

    this equity work in computer science

    specifically

    we can't ignore the fact that there is

    no representation

    our students fall through the cracks and

    there

    those who make it and study it don't

    necessarily get the option

    of working in the jobs that are

    available how do we fix that if we don't

    teach

    differently if we don't show them

    what a female coder looks like or black

    teachers or black ceos who are working

    in tech companies we cannot

    expect them to see themselves as

    that if there is nobody like that and

    right now

    i think that part of what i need to do

    and part of what i want to be able to do

    is

    make sure that when i'm in the classroom

    i'm having the most impact i can

    and how they feel in these areas and how

    much of themselves they need to bring

    into the classroom to be able to do that

    and i do want my students to bring

    themselves fully i don't want them to be

    filtering out parts of their

    personalities just

    to fit into that classroom in any way it

    sounds like

    coding in your class is almost like a

    medium for

    introspection and self-expression so

    kids are able to

    explore themselves and their cultures

    and understandings

    and then use code to express that

    understanding through some kind of a

    project i'm curious you had mentioned

    that

    you refused to give grades so what do

    you recommend

    for teachers when it comes to assessment

    which is different from evaluation so if

    anyone's listening those are

    two different things but then what led

    to your refusal to give grades because i

    had a very similar approach

    so my dissertation which will not be

    published because i gave up on it for

    financial reasons

    my dissertation was on grading practices

    and i will say i started my doctorate in

    and then i got extensions i actually

    could graduate up until

    but i started in 2007 having

    not been in the classroom now for two

    years not having gone back

    so i still very much felt that my

    dissertation was gonna demonstrate that

    grading was important i was wrong and

    why i was wrong was because i started

    researching

    and the little that existed at that time

    so we're talking 2007 through 2009

    when i first started my dissertation

    what little existed talked about

    the role of the teacher and having to

    judge the student

    and also offering feedback and how that

    doesn't

    really match so i talked about that a

    lot

    what i ended up having to study later

    and i did

    quite a bit of research on the schools

    that did publish like what their

    philosophies were and such

    i found that nobody agrees on what

    grading is

    that even in my school there were three

    algebra teachers

    in my previous school and none of us had

    the same grading philosophies

    so an a in my class had nothing to do

    with an a in somebody else's class

    so if we had a student graduated from

    that school

    with all a's depending on the teachers

    they had

    their preparation was different so what

    exactly does a grade give you

    except an artificial sense of mastery

    and so i started shifting from

    well if grades don't matter because they

    don't because people make up

    whatever they want to about what grades

    are and grading inflation was a thing

    then because after no child left behind

    something started happening where you

    couldn't give grades

    less than 50 in a lot of schools

    especially private schools

    so every time a student got a zero or

    didn't take an assessment you had to put

    a 50 in there

    and gpas in the 90s

    the graduating or entering college gpa i

    don't remember which one it was because

    it's been a while and my data is

    a little jumbled but it was something

    like 3.84 and now it's like 3.95

    so what everybody's a straight a student

    those are the kinds of things where i'm

    like

    sure everybody could be a straight a

    student but it doesn't mean

    anything and that's where i got to the

    point where

    grades don't mean anything i want you to

    show me what that

    looks like for you what were you focused

    on i want my students if i ask my

    students

    what did you learn in my classes i want

    them to say like oh

    in your class for this game design with

    scratch i was trying to focus

    on character creation because i'm

    interested in creating

    role-playing games and so what i learned

    was this

    that is a better answer than i got an a

    and so i don't believe in grades grades

    tell me absolutely nothing about the

    individual that's learning

    whereas i want my students to have a

    narrative behind what they do and their

    assessment of themselves

    i want them to be able to explain what

    it is that they did in my classroom not

    just say like oh i did great i got an a

    they mean nothing at all they literally

    just are there

    to make somebody happy sometimes it's

    parents sometimes it's students

    and i remember telling a student when i

    was moving from one school to another

    where i said

    i'm going to a school that's going great

    less than the next five years

    and she said then how am i supposed to

    know what my worth is

    and i felt we had missed it what was it

    that made you think that your worth was

    based on a grade that broke me in a lot

    of ways and i remember going to the head

    of that division

    i was in a different division there but

    i said i just got this comment from a

    student

    and i think it's important that you know

    because we're failing

    our students if they think their worth

    is based on a grade

    a really good school where they're very

    very competitive and

    yet elementary school gives no grades at

    all middle school is going grade less

    and actually the upper school some

    classes are already grade less

    and we're still competitive so what's

    the point why is it that we need to

    continue to work

    on saying but grades are important

    they're not

    so if somebody is listening to either

    going grade less or just like

    your general approach or philosophy to

    education

    and they're like yes this sounds great

    but i have a question about

    blank what's some of the typical

    questions that teachers have

    so i've had quite a bit of questions in

    a lot of different circles and

    recently i had a conversation with a

    parent not from my school

    and he said but a's were my thing like i

    wanted to get an a and that's how i

    became so successful

    you know they're in medicine and top of

    their game

    and i said but what if you could have

    focused

    on your growth would that have made it

    less competitive because you're

    competing against yourself anyway

    if you're a competitive person you're

    going to want to be better i

    still want to beat my top scorer in

    every game

    i'm just not trying to beat somebody

    else's score right and

    typically that makes me a lot better

    than if i was focusing on somebody else

    because my height score might actually

    be better than trying to beat somebody

    else's

    it's just a way to refocus

    what we are thinking about as success

    and i

    also think grades are empty

    we are dismissing a whole lot of people

    because of their average performance and

    i say that in quotations

    because you're listening and not seeing

    me but average

    performance is actually average

    to you because you haven't explored what

    makes that

    particular person excellent it tells me

    that you haven't taken the time to work

    with that student

    to be their best self and i do not care

    about what your c

    or a or b means i care about what does

    that student

    see as their success and i want

    everybody to understand their successes

    because in the real world sure there's

    some who were academically gifted who

    are doing phenomenal things but there

    are some who have been labeled as

    average who are doing amazing things

    it does not matter your grades do not

    matter you can be amazing with a c

    and i do not care or enough who cares if

    you failed something

    in my class you wouldn't have failed

    because i don't have that you fail if

    you don't do things

    and none of my students just not do

    things we have to change the focus

    so that everybody can learn to express

    themselves individually

    so that i can express who i am as a

    human being

    rather than who you want me to be so one

    of the counter arguments that i've heard

    from

    other people when i talk about grades

    similar to what you're just talking

    about

    they've said stuff like yeah well i want

    to make sure that my

    pilot got an a on landing a plane or

    that my surgeon

    is really good at understanding anatomy

    et cetera et cetera

    so i'm curious like how do you respond

    to people like that who pose

    those responses there's a ton of

    research that shows that the people who

    got the a's are not the actual people

    who

    have done exceptional work to figure out

    different methodologies

    part of the problem and part of the

    research and and i don't have the

    quotations with me right now

    and this is easily found if you do some

    research somebody who's gotten an a

    doesn't usually go beyond that a

    somebody who's struggling

    usually goes way beyond what they need

    to in order to succeed

    so if you're looking for somebody who's

    gonna cure cancer

    a lot of those people are not your a

    people

    some of them are but a lot of those

    people are the people that can see

    beyond

    that can look at problems different ways

    which is something that you learn when

    you struggle

    so no i don't care if my surgeon is

    the a student i care that my surgeon is

    the person that's

    qualified to perform that surgery and if

    they are board certified

    they are qualified i care that they have

    learned my case

    they know me as an individual and

    specifically because i've had

    so many instances where i've had

    difficulty with a doctor

    actually following what i'm saying

    rather than what it's showing

    on the screen i'll give myself as an

    example here when i break things

    my joints and my bones and whatever i

    don't swell

    which means that when you do x-rays you

    don't get the typical

    oh yes there's a fracture because the

    swelling and the fluid and all that

    stuff

    matters when they're doing those kinds

    of diagnosis

    so i actually ended up having to wait

    over six months

    for my tendon and my elbow to be

    repaired i knew i couldn't hold on to a

    purse

    but i wasn't displaying what others

    display when they've torn a tendon

    because my pain threshold is high so i

    was just like hey it hurts i can't

    actually

    like even hold my purse and they're like

    oh it's not broken let's do pt and i was

    like it's not working there's no change

    so it took six months for them to even

    let me get into an mri machine just to

    find out i had torn a tendon

    in my elbow which is now attached with

    metal clips

    that's happened multiple times i want

    the surgeon and the doctor who's going

    to listen

    who's going to say oh let me look at

    your history which then happened with

    another doctor who i said can you just

    look at my notes just look at

    these last three surgeries and then we

    can talk

    i want the people who will do that

    rather than the ones who go like

    but you're not that case because they're

    looking at average cases they're looking

    at

    what those rules they have to follow are

    to be able to make a diagnosis

    right that's not the doctor i want i

    want the doctor who's going to

    look at me as the patient the individual

    my history and then make recommendation

    i mean

    obviously i want a pilot who can land a

    plane but if they have a license they

    can land a plane again

    those are non-arguments in my book

    because

    there's so much and so much

    discrimination in the medical world too

    that people aren't really aware of you

    know it's the same thing as like

    the thing that reads your pulse can read

    yours and mine because i am lighter

    skinned even though i'm not

    white but a black person's pulse might

    not be read correctly because it doesn't

    see the black skin the brown skin like

    that's all discrimination because those

    are the only ones available in the

    market and that's what every hospital

    uses

    i want the doctor who's going to say

    that doesn't work because

    these things i want the people who can

    think through i want the people who can

    navigate the other and that means

    somebody who can say that didn't work so

    let me try this other thing

    and that comes with struggle and that's

    one of the reasons why i think

    computer science is important there is

    no computer scientist

    programmer in the world who will say

    like i am an expert

    i still haven't met anybody and maybe

    there are some who say i'm an expert in

    coding well everybody i've met

    will say i'm just okay or i'm still

    learning or

    my code is always broken they'll say

    like

    nothing has ever worked on the first try

    yeah

    because nothing ever does you forget the

    comma there or the semicolon or whatever

    and it doesn't work and you forget to

    test your code and write 300 lines of

    code which i've done

    and it's a bad idea yeah

    because then how do you find your error

    it's one of those things where

    computer science is a really safe place

    to make mistakes

    and it teaches our students so much more

    than

    this is a loop because it teaches our

    students that

    it might not have worked on the first

    try but maybe on the 10th try it did

    and i think that that's important

    because those are the students who are

    going to be excellent doctors and

    lawyers and

    accountants and physicians and whatever

    because they're going to look at things

    in a broader sense and they're going to

    look at the people

    individually if we teach our students as

    individuals they're going to look at us

    as individuals when we go to their

    offices

    and when we ask them for help yeah like

    that i hope

    listeners who are trying to make similar

    arguments against grades will also

    listen to those examples

    and be able to use that with

    administrators who might be reluctant

    with removing grades or whatever or

    grading based on participation rather

    than product

    etc so yeah thank you for giving those

    i'm curious like

    how do you practice or iterate on your

    abilities

    either as an educator in computer

    science in general i'm a bit of a

    practice nerd it's

    a topic that i'm fascinated with so i'm

    curious like what do you personally do

    to try and improve

    so there's quite a few different things

    first of all i study so i like to study

    i've been a nerd my whole life and i'm

    proud of that

    well i've been teaching i choose three

    textbooks before the summer

    and i purchase those three textbooks in

    whatever areas it is that i'm trying to

    study that summer and i

    spend some time not just studying the

    textbooks but finding

    videos about the topics finding experts

    in the field to like just

    explore and that's one of the reasons

    why i

    love neuroscience and child development

    i spent the summer

    studying that i spent the summer

    studying psychology

    last summer was not a one that i studied

    because it was a coveted summer and i

    was trying to survive

    which meant preparing for a year i

    didn't understand

    but the year before i had brought some

    books on machine learning and such

    because i was interested in ai

    i understood none of it but it was fun

    trying but that's the kind of thing

    where i

    study but that's the same thing i do for

    diversity i don't know everything

    and i still try to learn from other

    people one of the most recent

    conversations on a twitter

    learning network we were talking about

    pronouns for example

    and it came up because one of my

    students had mentioned something

    and we ended up having a conversation

    about what questions are we asking

    is the right question what's your

    preferred pronoun or is the question

    what pronouns do you use and not only

    that but subdividing it and we come up

    with three questions i believe and it

    was

    what pronouns do you want to use with

    me when we're talking one-on-one what

    pronouns do you want me to use

    when your parents or guardians are here

    and what pronouns do you want to use in

    the classroom in this classroom

    because those three things might

    actually not be the same especially in a

    middle school or

    upper school high school scenario and it

    gave me a lot of pause

    to think i hadn't gotten to that point

    on my own

    that i wouldn't have gotten to that

    point on my own and that this is still

    something that i

    very much need to learn about and most

    of us in that group had used a variation

    but never those

    kinds of three things together and one

    of the things that i think is important

    here is

    there are so many people doing this work

    who are still learning

    based on what our students feedback has

    been because those three questions

    didn't come from us the teachers they

    came from

    a student saying when my mom's here

    please don't use that

    so when i say that we're still learning

    it's not because you know that's not an

    excuse

    our students teach us so much about what

    it is that they need

    that we have to be works in progress so

    that we can address what those needs are

    and because society changes and because

    we have to adapt

    we can't just stop and say like oh i'm

    great i am an equity expert and i'm done

    again have not heard another equity

    expert who says like i'm done learning

    we can't be done learning

    right i think that my whole point in

    philosophy is that

    i have to listen to others in order for

    me to grow and that also

    means that i ask my students for

    feedback on

    how they felt treated as well as how

    they liked my programs and

    i will say i've been at my current job

    for three years and my first year that

    was

    shocking to a lot of students and they

    felt uncomfortable because they hadn't

    had a lot of teachers

    explore some of these things but by my

    third year now

    when i tell my students to be honest

    they're kind of brutal and that's

    amazing

    and they'll say like no that project

    felt kind of jumbled or

    unorganized or i do tell my students

    from the get-go

    my deadlines have to be flexible because

    some projects might take longer than

    others and some might take like a lot

    less

    and when we have ill-defined problems

    that is the case

    so they have to be okay with hey we're

    gonna cut this short a little bit or

    we're gonna give you

    three more weeks because i messed up

    because i want them to be able to finish

    something

    so their feedback is important and

    having them

    be able to express that in a very safe

    way

    and i hope that they agree with me on

    this but it makes it

    a much better classroom to be part of

    because

    they don't have to worry that i'm going

    to get insulted if they say they hated

    something or that they

    didn't really feel comfortable when i

    brought something up

    that needs to be something that they can

    address because when we're doing the

    equity work

    we also don't want to make it so that

    our students are uncomfortable

    so we have to provide safe spaces and

    the only way to know if that is a safe

    space is to ask them

    if it is yeah i really appreciate that

    uh resonates

    so i identified non-binary and was

    hosting

    a panel discussion at the equity in

    action summit and

    everybody on the panel existed outside

    of the male female binary

    and one of the things they did bring up

    was the thing that you just said so like

    the pronoun may be different one-on-one

    versus in the class versus at home

    and that was something that i hadn't

    even considered because i had parents

    who would support that like they

    wouldn't question that and i didn't need

    to worry about that

    and the students that i've worked with

    who have shifted pronouns

    in the class or asked for a different

    pronoun were college students so i

    haven't had k-12 students ask for that

    so in my own experiences i didn't even

    think about that and i

    exist as a non-binary individual so like

    i'm still learning through that as well

    a really good point that you had with

    that one of the things that you

    mentioned with covid

    and this last summer like preparing for

    the unknown essentially for what this

    year was going to look like i'm curious

    how have you not just in this last year

    but also

    broadly speaking in the field of

    education what have you done to kind of

    take care of yourself and to try and

    prevent that burnout that is often

    pervasive

    within the field so i didn't avoid the

    burnout completely

    as i am stepping out of the classroom

    for a bit but i did take a job that was

    educational in nature

    because i still want to coach and i

    still want to teach and i am an educator

    and that's who i am so i didn't avoid

    the burnout

    as much as i wish i would have but i

    will say that

    i am lucky in that i think that the

    classrooms that i had built

    were a lot easier to exist in a coveted

    world than if i had to redo everything

    what i mean by that is yes my robotics

    classes are difficult

    one of my classes we could do because we

    have robots for each child and we kept

    it at under 10

    because we very generously revolution

    robotics

    donated those robots so we were able to

    do that we couldn't do

    all trimesters because between trimester

    and one and two for example there was

    only one day

    we couldn't clean everything get

    everything ready for the next group

    so trimester two we adapted the class

    trimester three we're back at the robots

    because

    three months have gone by and now we can

    use the robust again but one of the

    things is

    my seventh and eighth grade classes we

    didn't have enough robots to kind of run

    that

    and we have a lot more students who

    wanted the class so

    i can't have 18 individual robots for

    example

    or 24. so those classes were adjusted to

    be something more computational and so

    we do some simulations but we also do

    other things

    i created something where we are always

    working around

    problems so we address some problems you

    know and that

    might be an ill-defined game based

    problem or it can be something else

    that's easily adaptable or a lot easier

    than

    if i am married to i have to have my

    smart board in front of me a projector

    and a whatever and the materials that i

    have in the room or

    because i adapt my classes to be

    very individualistic i feel like i

    didn't make as many changes or

    concessions as i would have had

    if i was 10 years ago me in that respect

    i think i got lucky i think my students

    are still having fun

    they're still getting in trouble for you

    doing stuff for my class in other

    classes which

    i always find fun it's interesting

    because when i get a complaint from a

    teacher like

    i caught your student working on their

    minecraft project

    i have to respond i'm so sorry i'll talk

    to him and

    inside i'm like yes they were interested

    i am very proud of the fact that my

    students continue to work even though

    they don't have homework so those kinds

    of things i think my

    classes are easier to adapt to whatever

    it is that's

    thrown at them because of the way that

    they are

    set up but at the same time it takes a

    toll

    to have to teach as many classes

    i'm also helping with the instructional

    piece a lot

    how do i use technology in the classroom

    i've run quite a bit of pd in

    my school this year helping with some of

    the deij stuff with with our director of

    the eij and some of the counseling

    pieces

    with our counselor with our learning

    specialist i

    partner with a lot of people in the

    school just to make sure that we have

    what we need and i do you know i've been

    lucky because again my administration is

    super supportive of what it is that i do

    and so we've been sharing as much as

    possible with others

    so that it can maybe hopefully help them

    adjust and adapt in an easier way but

    what i want to do this whole year again

    not in a million years not as an

    educator it's been too much and it's

    somebody will inevitably fall through

    the cracks because we have students

    on screen we have students in the room i

    said this

    recently you know i got to a point with

    a student where

    they finally shared you know their

    passion for anime etc

    and i had such a fun conversation with

    the student and i was so excited and we

    were talking

    a couple of us teachers were talking and

    i said i finally got

    through to this kid and we had this

    amazing conversation

    and then i said but yet i know that the

    six months it took me to get here it

    would have taken me a month if we were

    in person

    right that's the piece that i miss the

    most

    is i want that connection with my

    students i have a really good connection

    with some of them because

    some of my students are in multiple

    classes with me so i have had students

    who have seen

    every single trimester for the last

    three years but there's others who are

    new and i still don't know them as well

    right and that's the part that's

    difficult as an educator because our

    connections to our students are so

    important

    and for me to know them as individuals

    in this setting

    is hard what do you wish there was more

    research on that could

    inform your own practices either for

    this past year this upcoming year or

    just in general

    i don't know because we had never been

    faced with this so

    i don't know that there is a right

    answer to this

    i wish teachers were involved in the

    decisions

    much more than they were and i think

    that that's the piece where i

    am most disappointed with it's that it

    felt we had no voice

    and it felt like decisions were being

    made outside of

    any consideration for how that would

    affect teachers

    again i'm very lucky i am working from

    home even though my students are

    in school for medical reasons but the

    teachers who are in school

    they basically have no planning periods

    they're working

    non-stop to cover each other when

    there's somebody sick when there's

    somebody gone when a family member

    is sick and they have to go take care of

    them when all those little things that

    used to happen

    before coved are a thousand times harder

    now because

    it's also harder to find substitutes

    right to go into

    a classroom and take that risk and it's

    also

    not ideal my kids are stuck

    sitting in a room and i'm in a

    progressive school where

    students always moved around and it was

    a very lively

    happy place and i don't see that as much

    this year

    and that's so crushing for me

    because students you know they're

    exhausted by the end of the day

    when there's so many protocols to be

    found and followed and

    you know i'm wearing a mask all day i

    have to keep my distance from my friends

    and i have to

    always be on which takes

    physically a toll on students they get

    tired

    and that's not something that you can

    control and it might not be the best

    scenario and you know

    i've heard every excuse in the book but

    the truth is they're

    tired and we made no changes so

    if a student is it that exhausted where

    they're falling asleep at two o'clock

    then why are we going further than two

    o'clock and could we have changed

    some of that could we have given them a

    day at home

    throughout the week to recover could we

    have made sure

    that maybe classes were shorter so that

    teachers could actually have some time

    in the afternoons to prep and recover

    should we have done that and my answer

    to that would be absolutely yes we

    should have done that we didn't

    and so we have exhausted people and

    exhausted students

    and complaints about learning loss which

    whatever that means because we've set up

    these artificial

    finish lines that we must complete but

    every school has a different finish line

    but everybody's talking about some sort

    of learning loss and we live in a

    society that

    hasn't really acknowledged that we're an

    epidemic

    and things are going to be different and

    different is not necessarily bad whether

    or not

    the students have a learning last look

    they're going to catch up

    whatever catching up means i don't want

    to talk about catching up i want to say

    their learning is going to be different

    and that might actually be a good thing

    if you were to

    reach out to the like people who are

    listening and say hey i could really use

    help with

    blank what would that blank be so like

    if a listener might be able to assist

    with something or help answer a question

    or collaborate on something

    you know i don't have a specific thing

    that i would say that's my thing

    i would say i am a huge proponent

    of these like unofficial

    learning networks you know there's a

    group of us that follow each other on

    twitter and there's groups of

    i stay away from the facebook groups but

    there are some that are great i hear

    but part of this thing is we're doing

    some really cool work in some very

    spread out areas of this country for

    example

    and we do not have to do that alone and

    we do not have to have these

    conversations only with the people

    around us

    and so what i would say is if anybody

    wants to have a conversation or

    create a network or something that's

    where i would like to be included i

    am always looking for people who are

    doing cool stuff in the classrooms

    and using that to our advantage in terms

    of

    i learn from other people and i adapt

    that to what my classroom is

    you know because we are again spread out

    and so something that worked really well

    for me might not work for somebody else

    but it is that whole idea of hey i loved

    what you did

    but i adapted it this way i want to hear

    that

    i want to hear what it is that worked

    what didn't

    how you're adapting what your students

    say

    that's the piece where i think you know

    if anybody's willing to have those

    conversations that's where i want to be

    i want to

    learn more from others because i am

    nowhere near

    perfect and so i'm not looking for

    perfection that's a

    no but just like i'm not trying to be

    somebody as expert

    i may have some expertise and i'm not a

    great fan of

    any of those kinds of words i am a

    learner

    and one of the things that i will tell

    my students is i will learn with you if

    i don't know the answer to something

    i will look for help i am a proponent of

    saying i don't know to students

    i'm not google i don't have all the

    answers so

    those are the types of things where it's

    like i don't know all the answers

    so i want to have as many groups of

    people who want to have these

    conversations to get into a room and

    have those conversations

    and that room might look like a twitter

    feed and it might look like a group in

    facebook or it might look

    something else but those are the things

    that i think

    helped me the most is having those

    conversations with people who are doing

    the work in different

    areas different scenarios different

    schools you know and we talk about that

    these are artificial groups of friends

    and

    yet some of the people that are those

    artificial friends that you know i've

    never met in life are people who have

    had some of the most impact in my

    room and my practices it says something

    about

    what that can do for a teacher an

    educator

    regardless of how much they get put down

    these are groups of people who can help

    so much

    and so that's what i want people to kind

    of think about that we don't need to

    stay within

    our groups or our local

    communities etc to learn because some of

    the best

    work might be two states down and how do

    i find that out is by having

    conversations

    yeah and i don't know about for you but

    in

    most of the schools i've worked in in

    the classes i was teaching was the only

    teacher on that campus that taught that

    class

    so in order for me to find others who

    knew anything about the content area

    i had to actually go outside of that

    bubble outside of that

    physical space so that's a really good

    point so

    on that my boss my you know the director

    of where i'm at

    and she's amazing again i will say that

    a thousand times

    she partnered me because i'm a one-woman

    show

    with another one-woman show at the

    school who was the art

    teacher and emily joyce and i and i

    presented some of this in the

    acquitting action summit but we

    developed what these competencies were

    that we wanted our students to kind of

    think through when they're creating

    their goals for the trimesters

    but emily and i had my favorite

    collaboration

    those two years that we worked together

    she left to be an artist

    full-time she was the art teacher and i

    was the computational thinking teacher

    and yet

    our partnership was probably my favorite

    of all time

    we taught a class together that we had

    to do

    during covet times but it was art and

    tech

    and so how do we create art that has

    some technology in it

    we also taught a one-week what some

    schools call

    many masters and what others call you

    know we call it insights and

    it's a one week where students get to

    choose one class and they take that

    class all day every day for one week

    emily and i had one that was cardboard

    costume design which was fun

    and then the next year we did cosplay

    all day

    which was very anime heavy but we got to

    collaborate and things that most people

    wouldn't say are your typical

    partnerships

    yeah she and i in most schools art and

    tech don't communicate and yet when

    others were having department meetings

    emily and i were meeting and so i think

    that that's the kind of stuff where

    schools need to just break down that

    whole like division of subjects and

    stuff where people can talk about

    more than just the content and

    curriculum in their classrooms

    i love to see what the science teachers

    are doing there was a

    humanities project that was really cool

    because the kids could

    choose how they presented their work so

    some

    created a playlist of songs that talked

    about whatever book they were reading

    others had essays that they submitted

    others had a visual representation

    so some art that they used to talk about

    that book

    when you create options like that your

    students

    show up more of who they are as

    individuals and

    i would never know that that project

    even existed

    unless we had a conversation about it as

    a group

    instead of you know the departments the

    departments meet and that's the only

    people that they talk to

    and that's not the philosophy that i

    want to follow as an educator i want to

    learn from

    everybody not just the cs teachers yeah

    that's a really good point and

    i like that reframing of it in hindsight

    i should have reached out

    especially to the two music teachers

    that we had on campus because all my

    degrees are music education

    if anyone could have made those

    connections between music and computer

    science i could have done it

    but i didn't do that i was reaching out

    to the other computer science teachers

    in the district

    so yeah hindsight 2020.

    yeah you know and now there's a i don't

    know if you've

    seen it ear sketch from georgia tech

    yeah it's still a work in progress

    i want to see more depth into the

    teacher aspect of all things on that

    but i love that they use python with the

    library

    to do some music composition and my kids

    adore it so those kinds of

    things that we can do in the classroom

    but if i wanted to talk about

    composition of music if this wasn't a

    covid year we had already planned on

    having the music teacher one of them

    come in to talk about what makes a good

    song

    because he has a ton more knowledge

    about that even though i studied a lot

    of music so i stand for the san juan

    philharmonic i sang with the handle

    choir baltimore i've done

    quite a bit of music myself but it's all

    classical and it was all about the voice

    where my co-worker he's a musician

    like he knows composition

    he knows how to create her students

    that's a different perspective i don't

    need to know everything in my classroom

    i can bring somebody else

    to teach the parts that i don't know but

    those collaborations are only possible

    when

    we are provided the opportunities to

    talk to each other

    and my school does a pretty brilliant

    job of that but there's others where

    i've been where

    faculty meetings we were not allowed to

    speak it was

    whoever was leading the meeting and it

    was a quiet meeting and you sat there

    for an hour and then you left

    and then the other meetings were

    department meetings so all the math

    teachers talking together about

    math that has not provided any

    insight into other things

    so i do think that at schools we need to

    move into a different world

    when i was a student because i'm older

    we had to learn some things because

    there was no computer there was no

    google

    there are some things that i absolutely

    needed in order to succeed

    that is not this world in this world the

    information is there

    what my students really really need is

    how do i get the information that i need

    and how do i digest and how do i

    associate that information how do i take

    what i need but not what i don't need

    how do i

    interpret analyze and get to those

    conclusions

    that is much more important in this

    society

    than memorizing a whole bunch of

    historical data

    the history is important the real

    history is important

    super important but the memorization of

    it isn't

    right so i can stop spending time doing

    that

    spend a lot more time talking about why

    things happen

    and how does that relate to what we're

    seeing now

    and what are the cycles history is very

    cyclical

    we have a pandemic now 100 years ago

    there was another one and if you go 100

    years before

    there are things that happen in a cycle

    it's like the 500 year floods

    like there's things that happen and

    that's just because of the

    magnitude of it not necessarily that

    happens every 500 years

    but it is because it happens sort of

    every 500 years or so

    it's those cycles in history with nature

    with the way that human beings behave

    the war is the whatever you can look at

    that and learn

    about how those things repeat themselves

    and the things that lead up to those

    things

    instead of in 1941 something happened

    who cares those are the types of things

    that i think need to change it's the

    shift

    from memorization and traditional

    education to analysis

    yeah snaps over here on my end

    it resonates

    and i love education if you can't tell i

    love

    to understand more about it and i love

    to

    explore things because again i'm not an

    expert in all these areas i am

    certainly not a historian i've always

    loved patterns

    and so that also means that i wasted a

    lot of

    years hating history because of the way

    that it was taught

    and as an adult i've started to love

    learning more about history because i

    now

    focus differently on it but the only

    reason that happened is because i ended

    up observing a class where a teacher was

    talking about history very differently

    and that's the piece that i think i want

    to keep repeating and i want

    people to hear is that we may be doing

    things that are working

    but i guarantee you that there's

    somebody out there that's doing it

    better and so

    how do we know that it by having those

    conversations by

    observing other people by talking to

    other people

    because we should just like i want my

    students to better

    themselves to be better than themselves

    to compete against themselves i also

    want to be better

    i also want to continue to learn i also

    want to know what others are doing

    not because i want to beat them but

    because i want to beat me

    i want to be the best possible educator

    i can be

    not for me because the better i am as an

    educator the better the experience of my

    students

    and that's the part that i think is

    important yeah i'm trying not to say the

    same thing over and over but it

    definitely

    resonates with me i i really appreciate

    that

    so where might people go to connect with

    you or the organizations that you work

    with

    i'm easily found on twitter it's the

    easiest way to find me

    direct message on twitter will get you

    all my other contact information

    and i'm twitter um the nerdy geek with

    underscores under each word

    my personal email is smargarita99

    gmail.com

    but again if they need anything else i'm

    more than happy to discuss and dms are

    open and with that that concludes this

    week's episode of the csk8 podcast

    if you enjoyed this particular episode

    please consider sharing this

    and following sophia on twitter or even

    providing a review on whatever platform

    you're listening to this on

    it just helps more people find this

    content stay tuned next week for another

    unpacking scholarship episode and two

    weeks from now for another interview

    i hope you're all staying safe and are

    having a wonderful week

Guest Bio

Sofía De Jesús.jpeg

Sofía De Jesús is the author of Applied Computational Thinking with Python: Design algorithmic solutions for complex and challenging real-world problems and an education professional with over 20 years of experience teaching mathematics and computational thinking subjects to students grades five through college. Sofía graduated from the University of Puerto Rico with a Bachelor's degree in General Sciences with a focus on mathematics. She has a master's degree in Teacher Education and Allied Professions from the University of Dayton and completed the coursework for an EdD in Educational Leadership from the University of Phoenix. In her career, she has combined her love of development and curriculum design with her love for teaching. As a teacher, Sofía helps students incorporate the philosophy of computational thinking in courses like game design, circuits, Python, web design, and robotics. Sofía also currently works part time as an Associate Program Manager for Carnegie Mellon University's CS Academy team. She will join the team full time after the end of this school year. In that position, she hopes to help provide access to every community, especially in Spanish speaking countries, to expand representation of these communities in Computer Science and technology areas. Sofía has presented in multiple conferences about the importance of computational thinking and STEM in schools as well as the importance of diversity and equity in how we approach these topics in the classroom. Her most recent presentation was for CSTA's Equity in Action Summit, where she presented on Equity in Curriculum and Assessment Design in the CS Classroom.

In her spare time, Sofía likes to play video games and spend time with her 12 year old Yorkie, King Kong. Sofía also enjoys creating materials, small furniture, and jewelry using CNC machines and laser cutters. She enjoys spending as much time in Puerto Rico as work and life permits.

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