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C'est la Z

Category: misc

Put It In The Books

Just finished entering grades closing out my 32nd year teaching. Whew! It's been a hard year for me and I'm sure even harder for the K12 teachers out there. Still this year I'm really missing what I was oh so many years ago - a regular teacher. Teaching from September through June is a beast and from my first day on the job I had to work ten times harder than I ever had to as a software engineer and was commensurately exhausted.
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A Critical Mass Of CS Teachers

A big difficulty with creating CS opportunities for all our students is the lack of CS teachers. New York City addressed this problem with their CS4All program - quick form PD to get teachers into CS classrooms in a hurry. One can debate if that was the best way to go but it enabled NYC to create a whole lot of CS classes in a very short period of time.
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SIGCSE2022 - Things I plan to blog about

I've been up in Providence RI since this past Wednesday for SIGCSE2022. The big Computer Science Educators conference. Also, my first in person conference since pre-covid. I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about this big in person gathering but as it's turned out, it's been pretty comfortable. So far, I've attended two terrific keynotes. One by Barbara Liskov and the other Barbara Ericson, some really interesting sessions and some less interesting ones and have had a great time discussing CS education.
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First live conference in 2 years

Tomorrow I'll be driving up to Providence Rhode Island for SIGSE 2022, basically the largest computer science education conference out there. I guess ITSE, a conference I've never attended, is larger but that's really EdTech with some CS. The last in person conference I went to was two almost exactly two years ago - also SIGCSE. I arrived in Portland and went to a pre-conference session and on the morning of the big start, about three hours before I ran my session, I saw an email saying we were canceled.
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Programming Problem Solving And Crosswords

I used to do the New York Times Crossword puzzle. I don't remember when I started - some time late in Eugene Maleska's tenure as the editor. I continued on a few years into Will Shortz's puzzles. I stopped when the Times wanted to charge me for both print and online. I preferred reading the physical paper but liked printing the puzzle from their online site. I was also pissed at the Times coverage of a number of issues at the time.
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Pension Consultations

Devorah and I just got off a Zoom pension consultation. Very enlightening. I'm 54 so regardless, can't retire for another year but Devorah hit 55 last November and the DOE can really kill ones spirit and grind you down. Overall I've been pretty happy at Hunter but I've written before about the fact that I've been feeling some burn out and have been basically doing 2+ full time jobs myself at Hunter for the past few years and that's just not sustainable.
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Turning 54

So, tomorrow, October 19, is my birthday. The big 5 4. Okay, maybe it's not a traditionally big one. It doesn't end in a zero or a five but I think it rates. Why? Because it's one shy of 55. That's the magic age when I can retire collect my pension should I choose to do so. It's what you get when start young and put in over 30 years of service.
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No CSTA conference for me this year

Today is the start of CSTA's annual conference. Like last year, it's virtual. Unlike the past few years, this year I won't be attending. I'm a big fan of the CSTA conference. Jake and team have done an amazing job growing the conference and it's been a highlight of my year every time I've attended. I could say that I'm not attending due to my schedule - I'm pretty much spending all day every day during July teaching in my CS Teacher Certification program and at the end of the day I'm wiped.
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Election Thoughts - feeling hope but still concerned

I don't usually talk politics on this blog but it is the news of the day. We truly are at a turning point in this country and we should all be concerned with the road we take. Yesterday the media outlets called the election for Biden/Harris. It's not over but I thought this would be as good a time as any to share some thoughts and more importantly concerns.
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53 trips around the sun

In the 10 plus years of this blog I've never done a post on my birthday. Okay, maybe I've written one on my birthday but never talked about it. Why this year? No particular reason. Maybe because I'm getting older. I'm 53 today. Devorah will turn 54 in a month - from there one year until she can retire. I can follow a year later. I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing but it's nice to know that in two years I'll have a lot of options on the table.
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