I love talking shop but I don't have the opportunity to do so as much now that I'm retired. So, when my former student Dino Beslic emailed me and asked if I wanted to be on his podcast, The Dino Podcast, I was both honored and excited. Dino was a student of mine in the early 2000s but we haven't been in touch for years. I reached out to his brother Denis, also a student of mine, in order to connect yet another student to him for a job referral.

Usually, when I write about a teacher get together it's either my StuyCS people or CS educators. Last week, it was another group. Each year, Devorah, along with a bunch of her former colleagues from the Manhattan Center for Science and Math (MCSM) get together for a year end celebration. They've been doing this for something like 20 years even though most of the crew is retired now and all but I think one or two have left MCSM.

Earlier today, I saw a linkedin post by Code.org's Pat Yongpradit summarizing a series of articles on AI in K12 classrooms in Ed Week. I couldn't get far into the articles due to paywall restrictions but Pat's summary and the ensuing comments and discussion let me to writing this. One thing that stuck out in the comments, and this has been a recurring theme in AI in K12 classroom discussions is that a teacher who allows students to use AI, teaches AI, etc.

Now that I'm back from my trip (and the subsequent cold that I've battled for the past few days), time to get back to "work." About a month ago, my friend Jonathan Gottfied interviewed me for his State of Developer Education podcast. It's an hour plus dive into CS / Tech education. It dropped when I was on the plane back to NY last Thursday. I meant to write this on Friday but my cold took me out until today.

Another school year is starting. Hunter College's classes started last week and public school K12 teachers went back yesterday. I've been having some "back to school dreams" and, yeah, already missing being with the kids but not missing those opening meetings and the rest of the nonsense. Still, I'm thinking about what this school year will bring in terms of CS. The elephant in the room is just the same as what we closed out with last Spring - AI - specifically generative AI.

It's back to school time and in addition to all the usual back to school angst and excitement it's also time for the networks to stream all those teacher movies. Lots of a-list actors have been in teacher movies and many are really entertaining but I've also found many of them to be problematic. It's not because many of them are "white savior" films, even though, yeah, that too, but rather because many are indirectly demeaning to teachers and the teaching profession in general.

Passing another miletone on the way to retirement this week. I didn't think it would be this many steps - I figured I'd say I'm retiring, fill out a form, and be done. It turns out it's a multi stage process. This week, my contract with Hunter officially ends and as of Friday I'm on Travia leave - that's terminal leave to public school teachers. I basically get full pay and benefits while my reserved sick days get used up at a 2 sick for one real day rate.

Last weekend I attended the AI X Education Conference - an online conference on, well, AI in education. There were some talks about AI and generative AI in particular but really the split was that Saturday was focused on college education and Sunday on K12. I only caught a bit of each day but fortunately, the sessions were recorded. Two in particular or more specifically two specific speakers, one in a K12 STEM education session and another in a humanities education session caught my attention.

Now that I've got a little more free time and energy I decided to get working on a short video series on elisp - the language that's built in to and intertwined with the Emacs editor. As I've been thinking through and starting the series I started to think about the design decisions, big and small, one makes when designing a class, unit or lesson. I know many teachers are forced to teach scripted, canned curricula these days but the act of developing something and delivering it is so much more interesting and I dare say better for students.

I always enjoy Fred Wilson's predictions for the new year over on his blog and this year was no exception. I was inspired to think a bit on his education prediction: K12 systems around the US (and around the world) faced with teacher shortages and desperate to erase several years of learning shortfalls, will increasingly adopt online learning services in the school building in lieu of and in addition to in-class learning.