Brenda Wilkerson, Director of CS and IT education for Chicago public schools was one of the keynote speakers at this year's CSTA conference. During her talk, she made a comment about it taking three times through to get it right so if you're working hard and struggling in your first year of teaching CS, it's not the time to give up. Learning to teach takes time. She's absolutely correct. I saw this in myself and I've seen this in many other young teachers.

For anyone involved in K12 CS education, the past few years have been a wild ride. When I first tried to make inroads in the DOE decades ago I couldn't get through the door. Now, CS Education is everyone's darling. It's really amazing. It's been a combination of grass roots efforts by teachers, non profit education efforts such as TEALS, advocacy of groups like Code.org and amazing individuals like Fred Wilson who has probably done more to move the needle of CS Ed in NY than any other 10 people combined.

I was part of this conversation the other day: When science teachers asked me if I taught AP Java I'd always respond by asking them if they taught AP Microscope. — Mike Zamansky (@zamansky) July 7, 2017 I always use that line to emphasize that I teach CS - a way of thinking and problem solving and looking at the world. The languages we use in our classes are tools to help us communicate ideas not the ends but rather a means.

You've probably seen an image like this: It's what you see when you try to access a secure web site but the web site itself certified itself as being secure. When people see this on a professional site it sets off all manner of red flags. We feel much more comfortable when go to a site and we don't see that error. When we see the secure green lock in the url bar indicating that this site is certified through an external trusted source.

AP scores just came out. As usual, I see the posts and take part in conversations where teachers talk about their results. Some are happy about their results, some aren't, some don't really care. I just want to make a plea to all AP teachers out there: Don't let your value be dictated by the college board or any other exam. I never really cared much about my students' actual AP scores.

Is it easier to take CS people and teach them to teach or is it easier to take teachers and teach them CS? The question gets batted around from time to time. This time via twitter: Some think it's easier to teach a teacher to teach CS than to teach a CS pro to teach. @alfredtwo is not one of them https://t.co/QCUP8d8llZ — Diane Levitt (@diane_levitt) July 3, 2017 Agreed.

Back in February, I shared my thoughts on losing CS teachers to the tech industy. TL;DR - I don't think it will be a CS Ed problem. That said, I do think that it will be hard to find good CS teachers but the reason is because it will get harder and harder to find good teachers in general. There are plenty of reasons why it's harder to become a career teacher but I don't want to talk about those today.

The hot debate this past week in NY Education circles is Mayoral Control. When I started teaching, New York City schools were controlled by the Board of Education. The board appointed a chancellor. The system was supposed to balance community control as well as some centralized decision making. The system was created in the late 60s and was entrenched through my schooling. By the time I was a teacher I think it was pretty much a given that the system didn't work.

Tomorrow morning I fly out to Seattle for SIGCSE 2017. For those of you not in the CS Education space, SIGCSE is the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) special interest group for computer science education. I've wanted to go for years but have never been able. It's hard for a high school teacher to miss a week in mid March, particularly in places with a school calendar similar to New York.

If we properly prepare CS teachers, won't they just jump ship and take tech industry jobs? I hear that a lot. Tech pays big. Teaching? Not so much. Tech workers are respected and have flexible jobs. Teaching? Again, not so much. Those chanting these refrains advocate the current simple teacher "training" - scripted lessons, minimal pedagogical content knowledge, even less real content knowledge. That will keep them in the classroom.