Fifth grade innovators. We're ready to create.
When I first started I was like, how am I going to do this?
When I see the code on the screen, and it's so complicated looking
You already kind of turned off by it you look at it. You think?
Oh my I don't even know how to do thing learning and understanding that language.
Bringing in computational thinking and bringing in computer science at first it didn't seem like it would work.
But as soon as I got my hands dirty, it was a natural thing.
My name is Damien Kingsberry.
I'm a fifth grade teacher here at Dorothy J. Vaughn Academy of Technology.
Even though you might feel like what you're doing is not working
It actually is.
I've learned that once I give them an assessment based on a science lesson based on what we did in coding I see the numbers jump up.
My name is Erik Anderson. I am the math teacher here at Can Perform. So we're an arts public charter school in Wisconsin.
But we teach with an interdisciplinary model. Regardless of what your content is computer science and the use of technology
is it may not be the actual
center of your content, but it is helping your content move forward.
If you're a visual artist, you have to know your technology. To the drama students, low and behold
there's a lot of physics and lighting a stage. My name is Tracey Kim and
I teach third grade at Robert C Fisler.
It's okay
If it doesn't tie it into curriculum
completely from the beginning. Give it a chance and then it'll start to tie and you'll come up with the ideas.
They came up with an animal that they wanted to
you know maneuver through its biome and then they made a little costume for it
And then we're going to green screen the maze and then we wanted to make like a National Geographic documentary of that animal.
You don't get to do it in one try you don't code it once and then it's right
It's over and over,  you got to keep making changes again and again and it really teaches hey guys, we can't give up.
And then when you actually get to that finish line and you get it to do what you wanted me to do. It's such a
exhilarating feeling and I feel like that perfectly teaches growth mindset
You fail forward.
Every programmer I've ever met they know that they innately
understand that and I think most teachers innately understand that but they have a hard time connecting that.
I started small so I would learn little bits and
then whatever I would learn I would teach it to my kids and still me as soon as I learned
Otherwise I'd forget.
Learn a little, teach a little. Learn a little, teach a little.
Even if there's something I don't know how to do if someone else figures it out. They announce it out.
We're learning it together. You have to give up the mantle being the expert in class even folks who are computer science teachers formerly.
I would guess they would echo the same sentiment.
They can't be the master of everything that's happening because
everything that's happening is moving way too fast for any single person to know it all. As teachers
we're all worried that we don't know enough
but if we kind of dip our toes into the water together
we can get this computer science off the ground and help it to be truly embedded into all the curriculum not just
a coding time or a special coding class but part of our natural everyday curriculum.
In no workplace no you only do math and maybe not aspects of business or science or what you like?
It's all together
in every workplace in your life that all of these things are combined and I think computer science might be the gel that
brings it all together. You can connect this with science and math or you can connect this with reading. Yeah. It's possible.
So anybody that's really thinking about jumping into the computer science or coding world jump into it, jump right into it.
 
