This summer was a wonderful experience for me. I took on the role of lead teacher for a group of teachers that came from such a diverse background. We had former chefs, military, DJs, and teachers who have taught abroad and one special teacher with over 26 years of experience in the classroom. Collaborating remotely over zoom with people you know is hard enough as it is so I was a bit worried about how we would accomplish the tasks given to us during the SWITCH RET program. Luckily our group came together with a great collaborative spirit and today was the culmination of 5 weeks of work. I’m grateful for what PATHS-UP provides teachers. An opportunity to flip the script and let teachers know how their students feel on a daily basis, especially the ones without any prior programming experience. Having to do our own research project on an area in which we have little to no expertise can be so overwhelming. There is much that can be learned and you often have a defined target along with countless roads you could take along the way. My students who arrive in my CS 1 classes in the fall without any programming experience probably relate to this scenario. It’s very easy to say, “You have the internet! Go find the answer on Google!” but in reality, you need a community to help guide you to the destination. I’m grateful to our mentor Tianyi Zhang, who defined our target and helped guide us along the way. I’m especially grateful to my team members who proved that
If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together
I’m very fortunate to have been a part of this program for two years and I look forward to future opportunities to collaborate with my team members in interesting ways. I’m hopeful that my path will lead me to future collaborations with the PATHS UP and RSTEM teams as well. I leave you with the research poster that I proudly worked on this summer. Hope you enjoy it!
One Response to Goodbye for now…