Currently 6:45 AM as I sit here in my classroom, beginning the brainstorming process of everything I would like to discuss with my appraiser (the principal) for this year.

I woke up at 4:00 AM today, got up at 4:15, did some yoga, ate breakfast/brushed teeth, and was out the door by 5:45 AM. Arrived at school by 6:30 AM, prepared for the day, and sat down at the computer to type this.

Things I am grateful for:

  • Being able to still teach
  • Having some students taking me for their 3rd year (and some for their 4th class) - they must like me enough that they continue to sign up for my classes :shrug:
  • An administration both at the school-level and district-level that I feel keeps teachers’ interests in mind when making decisions. Many horror stories from my friends in other school districts in Houston and Austin

Thoughts/Questions I Have:

  • Who is the UIL coordinator? Are we still having Academic UIL competitions this year?
  • Are we prohibiting all group work? No getting up? Exchanging supplies? Clarify.
  • How do club meetings work? Drones won’t be possible?
  • When to take a day off? The COVID questionnaire - every time I have a headache I need to take off? I get one every time I don’t drink coffee…

Discussions about my Self Report 1 GAP Analysis:

  • Course Specific
    • AP CS A: I really like what I did by giving them access to past quizzes/exams and to trust them with their learning. These are students I’ve had for a year already.
    • AP CS P: Really like the new curriculum and how it has engagement built-in.
    • IS: Really like having students contact and look for mentors in the industry - we have some great mentors and great wisdom they have shared!
  • Really hammered home the idea of student ownership of learning.
    • Before giving Unit 1 exam, had a discussion about the idea of a grade vs learning.
    • Made multiple past quizzes and exams available to students to study from as practice.
    • During the exam, allowed students to ask me clarification questions.
    • After the exam, gave a talk about not settling for the grade they received, but rather taking it as a chance to look back at what they got wrong and not only learn that material but also to learn how to study better. This was done through the corrections process, where I required students to reflect and think about how they could study better. I had some great reflections and I have even gotten student emails about realizing where they were and their willingness to work harder. Talk about self-aware and metacognition! That’s what I’m trying to build - metacognition.
  • ARDs/Students with needs
    • Created a really good spreadsheet I use to keep track of accommodations/modifications for students.
    • Caveat - didn’t make/use until 4th week of school.
    • It can be hard to give every single student every single accommodation every single day. I also need to remember to document EVERYTHING.
  • Student Demographics
    • I remember when I first started teaching CS we had a ratio of basically 1:20 (female:male). This was 2017-2018 school year.
    • Last year, I remember having roughly a 1:10 ratio. 2019-2020 school year.
    • This year, based on rough estimates, we have roughly a 1:4 ratio.
      • In my most advanced class, IS, we have 1 female and 7 males for a 1:7 ratio.
      • In my AP CS A, we have 5 females and 18 males, for a 1:3.5 ratio.
      • In my intro class (AP CS P), we have 30 females, 95 males, for about a 1:3 ratio.
      • Ethnic demographics are harder to do without a report being run. I’ll ask Dr. Ruiz later to run one.
  • Starting off the school year.
    • During our first day of having everyone in-person, there was an awkwardness in the air. I thought everyone would be familiar with each other already - we already had 3 weeks of school together! - before realizing that was not the case. I quickly made up an activity. I gave them sentence starters (Hi my name is __, what is your name? My hobby is __, what are your hobbies?) and gave them time to practice talking to each other in person.
    • I then normalized the practice of asking for another student’s name if they forget their name. How? By modeling (continuously) me asking students for their names and owning up to not knowing their names.
    • Video Game Design: I started off the school year differently than previous years. Previously I would start off the school year by having students play games and evaluating them - however this year I started with more ‘rigorous’ activities. I think it set the tone for the students to expect to do work in the class.


LEADS Teacher Self Report 1 GAP Analysis

Onto the Self Report Questions. I’m going to go ahead and copy+paste the questions and my responses. I wrote this maybe beginning of 2nd week of school, when everything was pretty much still online? Hopefully I can elaborate on them.


Needs Assessment and GAP Analysis: What is the GAP between here I am and where I want to be?

Gather Data: What are my insights from analyzing my student achievement data (informal/formal)?

Overall: Streamline course offerings.

VGD: Students had hard time with Unity. Maybe direct teach the Unity coding portion?

Students during table top game portion said they were tired of it. Then when they went to Unity they said they liked the table top game and wished we could do it more. Students complaining and just don’t want to do work?

AP CSP: Results from AP exams were not great. 1st year teaching this. I don’t know why. Perhaps my students used the wrong form when submitting? (Submitted form without removing the prompts.) If so, need to practice and really hound them for that this year.

No access to tablets this year. Different curriculum (all online)

AP CSA: Results from AP exams were as I expected going into it. I expected a small group of students to do horribly (three 1’s, never had 1’s before) and another group to do fine. This is the first year I’ve had 1s (or anything below a 3). Combination of two factors: pay for AP exam in fall and the remote learning. Students are now telling me that they did my assignments and took them seriously and got a 5 on the exam. I know other students did not take it seriously and did more poorly on the exam. (We can discuss these assignments).

IS: Great results. Really like idea of having students invite industry people in for their talk.


Plan for Differences: What methods of differentiation will I incorporate to address the achievement gaps?

Overall: Increase student achievement across all ‘levels’.

Increase student sense of belonging. Have students learn each others’ names by first month of school.

Increase interactions among students. Have students working together and normalize forgetting/asking names of other students.

VGD: Go through table top game portion a little faster. Include an art portion (my weakness). Rethink how I teach the Unity portion - maybe just build a platformer and show students how to make own modifications. Include Virtual Reality this year.

AP CSP: New curriculum (code.org). All online and everyone has access.

AP CSA: Make all past quizzes and exams available to students to self-study. Why hide what I am testing over? Make new questions though for actual exam. (Think of it like Physics)

IS: Make students find a professional mentor to help them with their project.

Club: Make club and UIL accessible for all levels of cs students so more can join and feel like they belong (even 1st eyar).
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Goals for Increased Performance

What goals will guide my instructional decisions and improvement efforts?

What you want to do. How I will do it. “We will accomplish this by…” How I will evaluate it. “To assess our progress toward this goal, we will…”

STEM Campus Goal: Throughout the 2020-21 school year, we will help all students have clarity about where they are and how to grow. We will accomplish this by developing clear learning targets and success criteria, aligning assessments and student learning experiences, intentionally referencing learning targets and success criteria throughout daily instruction, monitoring and adjusting, providing targeted feedback, and offering regular opportunities for student reflection. To assess our progress toward this goal, we will routinely share, examine, and respond to formative assessment data in our PLCs.

STEM Team Goal: Throughout the 2020-2021 school year, we will facilitate real-time communication, encourage our students to take the initiative with their engagement, and improve their technology literacy. We will accomplish this goal by providing flexibility in communication with e-mails, discussion boards, and Teams Meetings; we are increasing our focus on learning, providing more virtual lab opportunities, and increasing our online presence; and we are providing application and software tutorials, opportunities for in-class troubleshooting, and providing online organizational tools and resources. To assess our progress towards this goal, we will monitor an increase in student work submittals, we will see a decrease in technology-related issues and troubleshooting questions, and we will see an increase in a higher quality of student work, projects, and presentations.

CS Individual Goal: Throughout the 2020-2021 school year, I will continue to refine my curriculum and find great curriculum to lead the CS team to be inclusive to all. I will accomplish this by 1) evaluating curriculum before school begins and choosing a teaching AND learning style that will cater to our unique learning environment; 2) establishing a great classroom environment at the start of school and reinforcing it throughout the school year; and 3) enabling all students to be successful by growing their ownership of learning and taking into consideration their unique circumstances. I will evaluate my progress towards this goal by 1) administering a survey before my conference to gauge student beliefs about their ability to succeed in computer science, classmates’ names, thoughts about the classroom environment itself and how conducive it is to learning, computer science career paths, and more; 2) gathering data for 2021-2022 students and evaluating for overall growth, female:male ratio, and underrepresented minorities in CS growth.
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Areas to Refine

What practices, if improved, will best help me reach my goals?

Starting off school year - I have learned that it really matters how you start. But also it never hurts to be real and do a reset.

Club/UIL - recording and modifying curriculum to make it available to first year CS students day 1.

Streamlined method of installing/applying for software center requests (mainly for Independent Study students).

Streamlined course offerings! Huzzah! 3 years of work and it only took Covid-19.