Today was the first day of school for all NYC teachers. Students come back tomorrow. That's a quick turnaround. Some years, they get a day or two before the kids come in. That's much easier.

The first day is usually dominated by meetings. In a large school like Stuy you'll typically have a long faculty meeting in the morning and a department meeting in the afternoon. Not much time to actually get ready for classes. You might think that it shouldn't be a big deal since you had all summer but in NYC where budgets don't come out until the summer for teachers not to know exactly what or when they're teaching until the first day back.

Things started at Hunter college last week but things are different there. I was excited to my students but the overall energy isn't the same. We're two weeks in and I still haven't seen most of my CS colleagues. In the high school, everyone comes back at once.

In any event. It's an exciting time in what should be an exciting year for CS teachers and students.

I'm not going to rehash everything that's going on since I'm sure most readers already already know what's going on but I'll add one thing. Many New York teachers need ongoing professional development - CTLE hours. It seems that teachers in specific programs like New York City's Software Engineering Pilot (SEP) have a number of PD opportunities provided to them and there also seems to be a good amount of PD at the entry level.

There doesn't seem to be much for the teacher ready for that next step.

To address this, we'll be offering once a month sessions through Hunter for CS teachers who are ready to move beyond the basics both in content and pedagogy.

The plan is to start some time in October.

In the meantime to all the teachers meeting their students tomorrow - have a great semester!!!!!