Some of you might have noticed that a few months ago, I decided to affiliate myself with The New York Code and Design Academy or NYCDA. I took on the role of "Academic Director, Youth Programs." It's a part time gig, at least for now and I'm helping them develop their programs for middle and high school students. Why did I choose them? There are a number of coding schools with varying levels of hype around them.

This past week, Garth Flint wrote a couple of posts on how he got to be a CS teacher and on being a CS teacher. You can find them here: Part 1 Part 2 They're both well worth a read. It got me thinking about how I got my start. I never planned on being a teacher. I figured I'd just work in tech. After working my way through college, fresh CS degree in hand, I landed at Goldman Sachs.

Funny story from yesterday. Devorah, my better half, is an assistant principal at another high school. Yesterday evening, she was at work late for "curriculum night." Parents came to the school after hours to hear a variety of presentations. During her presentation, Devorah mentioned her name, that she had two former public school kids in college, and that's about it for the personal info. After the session, two parents approached Devorah to say "

I was brought up on Gilberg and Sullvan. My father, who always wanted to be an opera singer sang with LOOM back in the day and there was always classical music playing. Either from the Hi Fi or my father singing. Recently, there's been a kerfufle over what was to be NYGASP's production of Mikado. My son, Natan wrote a terrific blog post on it and the suspension of belief in opera.

Last post was a little heavy so just a short fun one for today. "Just another day at StuyCS." That was the subject of the email Brian sent with the photo above. What's going on? We're working on advanced JavaScript while also looking at Backbone.js. Now, as sometimes happens, Batya, while in her CS class up at college, decided to open up a Google chat with me. This happens now and then.

I'm a born and bred New Yorker and more and more I'm lamenting what the city's becoming. New York used to be a collection of neighborhoods. Yes, we were the city that never slept, but there were scores of mom and pop stores, sole proprieterships. You could become a "regular." I'm reminded of Tom Shachman's book Around the Block which looks at the businesses around a single NYC block, mostly all gone now.

I just read Alfred Thompson's predictions for next year. I was going to leave a comment but since it would have gotten somewhat long winded, I thought I'd comment in a post of my own. If you haven't read Alfred's post yet, check it out: http://blog.acthompson.net/2015/01/computer-science-education-predictions.html On more states allowing CS to count for a graduation requirement: Alfred's probably right but I'm leery. Sure, it could end up terrific but I could see a number of ways this could play out badly.

Spent most of vacation relaxing. Finished off the remaining college recs, tried to catch up on sleep, and worked on a few project. We've had an interesting December break dynamic in our household for the past few years. My son, Natan is very much into his music, both as a performer and a composer. A few years ago we discovered KlezKamp. It spoke to both Natan and Devorah. Batya, coming back from college wasn't so into it and I was somewhat indifferent.

It's hard to believe that this is my 25th year teaching and that my first StuyCS class graduated in June 1995. It's really hard to believe that I'm now looking at the end of a significant part of my life and career. Over the summer, Mariya, Kachun, and Stella, all writers for Stuy's Spectator worte an article that chronicled StuyCS. It's a really nice piece. It skirted the battles I've had and the fact that we get no love or support from Stuy or the DOE, but still, as I said, it's a really nice piece.

Last night, I attended the Dream It, Code It, Win It awards. I'd actually write up the event but Fred Wilson's already done a better job at that than I could: http://avc.com/2014/05/dream-it-and-code-it/ As Fred stated on his blog, it's a real shame that the high schooler's didn't get to show off their work but it was great to see that there were entries from a variety of schools including The Academy for Software Engineering and The Young Women's Leadership Academy.