Wow. What a week. As always, the first week of school takes me like a storm. Here’s to sore throats, always being ‘on’ mentally, and quick restroom breaks.

What I really liked: Introduction/Seating: I have done the same first-day activity for the past 3 years and really enjoy it. My students seem to have a fun time as well. I have a prompt up on my board telling students to place their stuff near the front and to find a seat. Then when the tardy bell rings, I instruct students they have 3 minutes to sit from oldest to youngest without making noise. I observe as students interact with each other and take note of group dynamics: there are students that take charge, those that give up, those who get frustrated but keep going, etc. And oh how they try to ‘bend the rules’. They do the same things every year - using their ID badge, writing their birthdays on a piece of paper, using their schedules. I start making additional rules preventing such things as I catch it. Think ‘Naruto Genin Exam’. Anyways, I have never had a class do it 100% successfully. But that’s not the point. The main point of the activity is to get students to start interacting with and comfortable with each other. They have fun, make a fool of themselves (quite hilarious to watch), and have more fun. We learn to laugh at ourselves. And depending on the class, there are so many extensions. Video Game Design: was this ‘game’ fun, how would you change difficulty level, relating them bending the rules to ‘bugs’ in the game. Computer Science classes: having a ‘plan’ before starting, is there an efficient ‘algorithm’ to ‘sort’, etc. Working together. Making your ‘voice’ heard - even if they can’t make noise.

Syllabus/Getting To Know You: How many students actually read the syllabus? Parents? I point out my syllabus but don’t spend much time on it. I have given students a Student/Parent Get-To-Know-You sheet where students fill out the front and parents fill out the back. Last year when I handed out the hard copy, I had almost 100% participation. This year when I only had an electronic copy available (with printed one available upon request), I had less participation. Alot of it is on the parent side (too busy, out of house all day for work, own business). To encourage participation, one of the questions asks them their favorite song to include on a class playlist. I’ve started playing it during class and seeing how student faces light up as they recognize ‘their’ song. Maybe I’ll allow them to submit one song a week? Month? But anyways, I think the activity really helps me get a more holistic view of the student. I think I will print out copies for each student next year.

Video Game Design: Liked: Definitely start first week playing various board games to give students a broader view of what a board game is. Too many people have only played checkers, chess, Monopoly, Candy Land, and the like. I would hold off on making students generate their own rules (given game pieces) until later - possibly after their first game.

AP Computer Science Principles: So far so good. Definitely good to emphasize the importance of taking the reflections seriously as that is what they will be expected to do on the AP Exam. Need to stop forgetting to add students to my AP Classroom.

AP Computer Science A: I really appreciate the way College Board made Units for AP CS A. Helps plan and pinpoint what students need to know. For next year, I want to make my own slides to accompany my in-class coding lectures. CSAwesome (Runestone) is great.

PreAP Computer Science: Loving CMU CS Academy. The graphical introduction to teaching Python - instead of the standard print() and input() - is magnificient. I see students debugging their own problems and getting an intuitive understanding of methods and function calls and parameters immediately. Still encouraging students to read the console for errors.

OnLevel Computer Science: Using ECS curriculum. Although I do not teach it directly, I help the teacher plan. Heard good things from one of my students in VGD and this class. Really enjoying searching up and building his own computer to do what he wants to do.

Looking Forward Glad I got the first Unit (and second Unit for a lot of classes) planned before school began. Definitely needing to stay from 6-4:30 every day (with some leeway) to remain on top of things. Coding Club - hoping to help my leaders develop in their non-CS related tasks, such as public speaking and explaining things to non-technical people. Looking forward to a great year. Social Media - definitely need to get onto this.