Coming in from my run this morning I had a thought. When I'm not otherwise doing anything in particular, I frequently go for a walk at some point during the day. Usually two to five miles. I've got a few standard routes - the Union Square Green Market and/or Kalustyans, both of which usually result in some food related purchase, walking down to the village and up the river, or similar but starting by going north.

I stumbled upon an awesome new YouTube channel for programmers - Worst Practices. Specifically, Worst Practices in Software Development. The tagline is "we've all heard enough about everyone's best practices in software development, we're here to talk about … worst practices." I've written about "best practices" for teaching before - I don't believe in them - I believe in practices that are good under certain circumstances. Maybe in the majority of circumstances but there's no silver bullet.

One of the highlights of this week has been finally getting together with a large number of the teachers in my certification program. Another was finally being able to once again attend a CSTA-NY meeting as they've almost always conflicted with my teaching schedule over the past couple of years. The reason I scheduled my meetup back to back with the CSTA-NY meetup was because of another highlight. Five of my Advanced Certificate teachers are from the Dryden and Groton school districts, a little east and northeast of Cayuga lake near Ithaca.

Finally, after three years, we had the opportunity for the participants in my (Hunter's) CS Teacher Certification program to get together in person. Last year, a handful of the cohort 2 members had a dinner but never a big gathering across the cohorts. Not everyone could make it, so yesterday, we had close to 50 teachers out of our total 100 across the three cohorts gather at Yext in the Meatpacking district to meet each other, talk shop, and celebrate being New York State's first certified CS teachers.

Classes are done and all that's left is the grading. Grading is something I truly hate. Hating grading actually had a lot to do with my starting to build CS at Stuy (story here). I'm glad it's my last grading rodeo but even as I work through assignments for the final time after 33 years I still have many questions about the best way to do it. Should we give tests or be project based?

So, this morning I taught my last two classes as a full time teacher. I still have grading for a few weeks and then some other things to wrap up my programs and, due to my contract and how terminal leave works I won't officially be retired for a few more months but today was kind of my last day of actual work, work. Some approximate stats: Taught approximately 290 specific course sections (probably a little more) Taught somewhere between 6,000 and 12,000 different students Created more than 12 courses from whole cloth to go with new version of a dozen or so more Started three major programs from scratch (StuyCS, Hunter honors CS, Hunter CS Teacher Education) along with a non-profit and it's programs (CSTUY), Google CAPE, and aided in the design of others.

The other day Natan told me about an upcoming NYC Ballet production. A one act adaptation of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" along with a ballet set to Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition." He thought it would speak to me. Swan Lake for reasons we'll get to and the Mussorgsky because he already knows I really like the piece but also because this production highlights not the works of Viktor Hartmann as the piano suite is about but rather of Wassily Kandinsky.

It's once again teacher appreciation week. That's a week late in the semester ostensibly celebrating our teachers. Over the years there have been a few highlight moments for me during these teacher appreciation weeks but overall, I can't say I've been a fan of the "event." Why not? Because it's usually made up, superficial, and frequently patronizing. Some stores offer discounts. Staples and Office Depot offering essentially discounts on supplies for the classroom that teachers shouldn't have to purchase in the first place.

One of the things I enjoy about the topics class I'm teaching is that for most of the course, the students, teachers in their own rights, deliver much of the instruction. Since I have much more CS experience than most, maybe all of the students, I usually don't see a great deal of new content for me - maybe a touch here or there, but I do get to see different approaches and teaching techniques and that can be a lot of fun.

I woke up this morning and as usual, looked over recent postings on Diane Ravitch's blog. For those of you who don't know, Diane is an education historian and a staunch advocate for public schools. She's been outspoken against charters, vouchers, and other privatization efforts. What adds to Diane's credibility is that she came over from the other side as she was assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush and originally a charter supporter until she saw through the lies.