I'm super proud to say that New York City now has state certified Computer Science Teachers!!!!!! It's been a long road - really long if you consider I got started on my CS Ed journey decades ago and there's a long road ahead but we hit a major milestone. I started at Hunter a little over five years ago and creating teacher certification programs was one of the goals. Back then, the state had neither CS certification nor CS standards.

It took a while but we're finally here. Hunter College is launching it's Computer Science Teacher Certification programs. This was the second big initiative I've been working on at Hunter. The first was the Daedalus undergraduate CS scholars program. The Daedalus program started my first year and is now providing the best value (and in my opinion best) undergraduate CS opportunity in New York. CS Certification took longer. I had to design the programs, they had to make it through the whole CUNY governance process which even under ideal circumstances takes around a year and then up through NYSED.

A question that frequently comes up with respect to CS for All is what does it mean? To me it means giving all students some fundamental exposure to computer science so that they can: Make use of those thinking skills, problem solving approaches, and practical tools regardless of their future paths. Provide a path for the subset of "all" that desire to further pursue computer science. But even with this, how do you do it?

Advanced Placement Computer Science got top billing on Alfred Thompson's Things I'm Watching in 2017 post. Alfred talks about how APCS-P exploded onto the scene and wonders what will happen with APCS this year. I have some questions as well but mine won't be answered for years to come, if ever. Like it or not, the College Board has an out sized influence on K12 education. As long as people are convinced that AP=good there will be a push for more and more AP classes and APCS-P is a perfect class to push.