Teaching Engineer / Programmer

Unlike most teachers, I come at teaching with the mindset of an engineer and/or a programmer (depending on the day – and the problem!).

The engineering mindset is all about problem-solving. I am faced with a problem and then generate solutions. Whenever something like this comes up in my classes, I try to think of solutions and implement them. I’ve always been an early adopter, and I saw a long time ago that traditional education is not always the most effective. As a computer science teacher, I am lucky to have access to computer labs, and I teach my students how to use technology to learn. I started flipping the classroom long ago and have worked to develop a self-paced, mastery structure for my classes. With great success, I also implemented many of the ideas in Joe Feldman’s Grading For Equity several years ago.

The programming mindset is about automation and immediate feedback. I taught myself how to write Junit testing so I could auto-grade my students’ work, but I realized quickly that it was less about saving me time as the teacher and more about helping my students learn. Well-written Junit tests could produce immediate feedback to help my students find and fix their mistakes faster. As a result, they would spend less time frustrated and more time getting important feedback about whether their code was complete and/or correct. I would love to be able to automate myself out of a job, but I also love my job — I just want to be the most efficient teacher/grader I can be!