Saturday, September 29, 2012

Back to GCC

I get to work with graduate fellows in Computer Science, thanks to a GK-12 NSF grant.  The last two years I was privileged to work with Jason Robison, a great, kind person who touched the lives of many of my students.  I was lucky to get Jason to help out with our Comp Sci program for two years, and we miss him a lot.

This year we are lucky to have David Knox working with us.  David supports our program wonderfully and is working with me to develop a unit on simulations in Computer Science.

David is old school--but in the best way possible.  He eschews all the typical barriers to education and makes me think hard about my effectiveness as a teacher.  One day David said, "well, what matters now is how many of them are actually engaged."  He then walked around the room, checking up on each and every student in class.

That was a gut check, really.  I don't avoid facing the hard facts of being a teacher in a country that does little to ensure our students are academically prepared for college.  We pay our sports stars salaries that put them far above the real heros in the USA.  If you touch others and (more importantly) make them think a bit, you have done well!

Oh yeah--so what does this have to do with the GCC?