This article made its rounds this past week. It cites a couple of papers claiming that CS teachers are delivering better instruction and might be better qualified than teachers in other subject areas. This is in spite of the fact that CS teachers generally have a generally weak background in CS as well as in CS related pedagogy compared to teachers of other more well established subjects. The papers forming the basis for the article were written by Paul Bruno a professor of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership

So last week I completed my second and final week back at Stuy teaching CS. We spent Monday finishing up the mode lesson and then spent most of the week on this topic - writing a computer program to automatically decode something "encrypted" with a Caesar Cipher. The post I just linked to was from when I first taught the lesson. I've refined and reworked it considerable since then but the gist is the same.

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.