Last time, I wrote about frustrations in trying to motivate myself to learn ocaml. I could see the strong points but given that I've been using Clojure now for a while, it didn't really hold any value added for me in my current situation. Next, I thought I'd explore Rust. On the non-functional style, my go to languages have always been Python for scripting and small things and C professionally.

Now that I've done posting about why I'm retiring we can get back to our usual blogging. I haven't really done anything technical over the past couple of year. The most programming I did in the past 18 months was a halfhearted effort at the Advent of Code 2021 event last December. I thought I'd see about picking up a new language to change that. In doing so, I was reminded of some of my resistances to learning a new language and how I've seen similar from self taught students coming into my classes.

Links to the three posts in this series: If you're seeing this before the previous two posts, I'd encourage you to read post 1 and 2 first. Post 1: Why I'm retiring Post 2: What was accomplished at Hunter Post 3: This post As I said at the start of these three posts, I do want to stay in the game. Maybe take a break and definately slow down but I still think I've got something to contribute.

Links to the posts in this series If you're reading this before the previous post, I'd recommend going back and reading that one first. Post 1: Why I'm retiring Post 2: This post Post 3: What I think I'll be looking for next I think I've carved out a somewhat unique career. Never set out to be a teacher and a couple of different turns here or there and things could have been very different.

I've been dropping mentions of this here and there for a while now but I think it's time to come out more formally - I'm planning on retiring from Hunter at the end of this Spring. This doesn't mean getting out of the CS or CS Ed game entirely - I could stay on in a part time capacity and, after some decompression I think I still have things to offer but the plan is retire, collect my pension, and then see where I can continue to be contribute to the Ed/CS Ed scene.

So, in some of the social platform discussion on my last post, the issue of the practicality of a college education came up. Should college teach practical job skills or should it be for some more abstract purpose - learning for learning sake or if one would be a bit presumptions learning how to think. Way back when going to college was not the norm. Most went from HS to workforce and even in HS you might have the "academic" track that prepared you for college, "vocational" that was job prep like automotive or regular which was neither extreme.

Hunter College, like most colleges and universities is facing unprecedented demand for CS. It's the hot major. Being a public college, we have an obligation to provide the best education possible to as many students as we can in our locality. This means we can't just put a GPA requirement or other cap on the major and we can't do things I've heard "elite" schools do like essentially making applicants apply to the major direct from HS.

It's fall so for HS teachers who taught juniors last year it's recommendation writing season. For many of those teachers, they're already well into the season with early decision deadlines being as early as November 1. Writing recs is one thing I don't miss now that I'm working at the college level. Sure, it was always an honor to be asked but it was a lot of work. Now I'm on the other side and reading the recs.

No, I'm not walking back anything from my last post. I still think we have to stop using professional development as the primary means for preparing CS teachers but I wanted to take a minute to make it clear that while there's plenty of lousy PD out there, there's also plenty of good stuff. For bad PD, it's frequently mandated and frequently neither useful or relevant or even if its potentially relevant, but the time it becomes useful you don't remember it.

EDIT I was reminded that by referring to CS4All and what it's doing in NYC people could read an implication that the many hard working educators are not doing a yeoman's job and indeed they are. They've been doing the heavy lifting from day 1 to bring opportunities to students and I did not mean to impugn their work or efforts in any way. I also want to mention that I know that there are many educators working in NY in CS who have been providing direct support for teachers outside of PD and this post is not about them and their good work.