Some of you might have noticed that a few months ago, I decided to affiliate myself with The New York Code and Design Academy or NYCDA. I took on the role of "Academic Director, Youth Programs." It's a part time gig, at least for now and I'm helping them develop their programs for middle and high school students. Why did I choose them? There are a number of coding schools with varying levels of hype around them.

This past week, Garth Flint wrote a couple of posts on how he got to be a CS teacher and on being a CS teacher. You can find them here: Part 1 Part 2 They're both well worth a read. It got me thinking about how I got my start. I never planned on being a teacher. I figured I'd just work in tech. After working my way through college, fresh CS degree in hand, I landed at Goldman Sachs.

Funny story from yesterday. Devorah, my better half, is an assistant principal at another high school. Yesterday evening, she was at work late for "curriculum night." Parents came to the school after hours to hear a variety of presentations. During her presentation, Devorah mentioned her name, that she had two former public school kids in college, and that's about it for the personal info. After the session, two parents approached Devorah to say "

Today we kicked off Hacking Sessions 2015. Saturday morning with sixty kids in a room brainstorming ideas. Soon they'll settle on teams and projects and we'll be off for a semester of exploring CS and tech. The next couple of weeks will be a little chaotic with groups shifting, mentors figuring out which groups to work with and us, the instructors launching each team on its way. This is our third year running Hacking Sessions.

I was brought up on Gilberg and Sullvan. My father, who always wanted to be an opera singer sang with LOOM back in the day and there was always classical music playing. Either from the Hi Fi or my father singing. Recently, there's been a kerfufle over what was to be NYGASP's production of Mikado. My son, Natan wrote a terrific blog post on it and the suspension of belief in opera.

Earlier this week, Mayor Bill deBlasio announced some ambitious CS Education Plans for NYC. I posted a response here. Now that a few days past, I thought I'd clear a few things up. First and foremost, I hope my concerns are unfounded and I hope the plan is a tremendous success. What's got me bummed is not that I need to see my name in lights given that in many ways I've been a CS Ed trailblazer (although who doesn't like a little ego stroking), rather that in my humble opinion NY has squandered a great opportunity and resource and as a results, kids won't get nearly all they could.

The NY Times just posted an article - the mayor announced a 10 year deadline by which time all NYC public school students will be taking CS. I should be happy. I'm not. I feel thoroughly defeated. As many of you know, I've struggled for years to try to bring CS education to more kids and to train more teachers. You also probably know that over the years, I've become pretty good at this.

This post is in response to an email thread on the NYTM mailing list. I mentioned how the NYC DOE refused to even look at our program at Stuy let alone support us and help us get to more kids. Rather than pollute an email thread, I said I'd write up the story here. I've been at the CS Ed game for a long time. Twenty five years to be exact.

We talked about setting kids up to fail in math. What about CS? Well, it's a little subtler. I started thinking about this after a conversation with one of my graduates about Harvard's famous CS50. Since that conversation, I've spoken to a number of my kids that have gone through CS50 and most seem to say the same things: They don't really teach anything The kids rely on a group member who already knows stuff or will learn all the stuff on their own If it weren't for my StuyCS background my group would have really struggled.

As many of you know, I'm part of the team behind CSTUY, a non-profit dedicated to bringing the best CS education to kids who wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity. Over the past two summers we've hosted our highly succesful immersion program SHIP. We were also able to run a small Saturday program thanks to the generosity of SumAll who provided space, and other members of the StuyCS family who provided laptops and the funds we needed.