As you might have heard, I'm back at Stuyvesant teaching.

Not permanent or full time - just covering for a CS teacher who's on grand jury duty. She's out for three week but since I was at SIGCSETS for the first one, I'm only covering for two. Last week and the one upcoming.

I wouldn't be covering all 5 of the teacher's classes, just 3 - periods 6, 7, and 8, the second half of Stuy's intro CS class. A class that I actually designed ages ago, of course, the class had evolved since I left Stuy about a decade ago.

The class used Python and the classes were at a nice place. They had learned up through and including lists. I could have just ploughed ahead and covered the rest of Python, starting with dictionaries but I decided better would be to do a couple of interesting applications.

My thought process was that I'm not the regular teacher and while their regular teacher brings certain things to the classroom that I don't, similarly I bring some things that she doesn't. If I did list application lessons that let me work my spin on the class, the kids would potentially be getting more out of the class than just someone teaching mundane syntax.

I decided for the first unit I'd do this lesson. It's a nice application of lists, introduces some deep runtime concepts, and is an overall nice gateway subject. I won't talk about the unit I'll start tomorrow on the off chance that one of the students happens upon this blog. I don't want to give away any surprises.

I figured I'd have fun with the gig but I did have a number of concerns.

First and foremost, I'd be "the sub." The classes were sent an email saying I'd be coming and that I had originally developed the course but who knows how many kids paid attention to the email or what that meant to them. I figured I'd get a certain level of respect - Stuy kids are good kids but still, I'd be the sub.

I also knew that by having only two weeks, I wouldn't be able to set up my culture. It wouldn't be enough time for me to really get to know my students nor for them to really get my schtick. Similarly I wouldn't have time to set new class protocols and procedures effectively.

On top of that, I had my first "grand student." Specifically the child of former students and in fact students that I've grown close to.

On the one hand, I was the sub, on the other hand, if there were expectations due to reputation, since I was only there for two weeks, I'd likely not meet them.

On the third hand, if I weren't there, they'd be going multiple weeks with no live CS instruction, anything I did get done was a bonus.

So, I figured I'd keep things simple. I'd use my usual bag of tricks - live coding with questions and predictions, Eliciting subgoals, and similar techniques that don't require deep knowledge of my students.

So, how'd it go?

Well first off, the kids haven't really changed in a decade. It was similar to when I started a class in the Fall. Students by and large well behaved, mostly quiet with a few more frequent contributors and all in all good kids and smart kids. Over the week it seemed like more kids were warming up to me as the teacher and to my take on the class. Sure, it was mid semester but the dynamic was pretty much like when I'd start any class at Stuy.

It was notably different though from starting a class at Hunter college but I attribute that to the fact that I meet with the Stuy kids every day and at Hunter it was only twice a week.

The students acted in ways I expected and made mistakes that I expected them to make. All in all it's been a fun experience for me and I hope worthwhile for them.

Now, things haven't been perfect. There have been kids spending the class period doing other work or on their phones but as long as they haven't been a distraction to the kids who've wanted to learn, I've let it slide. I figure that this is on them and with two weeks, I'm going to give everything I can to the people who want to learn rather than putting time and energy into the few who don't. Were this my actual full time class, I'd handle things differently.

I guess another thing worth commenting on is that this is the first time in years when I've had to be somewhere to do something five straight days. While I'm enjoying the teaching, I'm not enjoying the every day specific time obligation. Maybe if it were first thing in the morning it would be different but teaching between around 11:50 - 2:00 is just a bit awkward.

So week's in the books. Starting another topic that I think is pretty fun tomorrow and we'll finish off the week with an AMA.