Posts from Teacher

A few months ago, I read about this amazing program called TEALS that allows software engineers to stop by a local school on their way to work and teach computer science to high school students. I thought "what an amazing idea".

Fast forward and I am happy to tell you that TEALS is coming to NYC this fall. About a dozen public high schools in NYC have expressed interest and the final group of participating schools will be nailed down in the next few weeks.

The way this works is a software engineer literally stops by the school on his or her way to work, teaches the class in partnership with one of the existing teachers in the school, and is out the door on the way to work before any of his or her colleagues is out of bed. The TEALS program teaches two classes, an Intro To CS class based on the Berkeley curriculum, and an AP CS class based on the University of Washington curriculum. Software engineers who choose to participate get trained during the summer to teach one or both, and then they teach up to a few days a week on the way to work.

THE ASK: We need to recruit up to 50 software engineers here in NYC to make this a reality. The first info session is next Monday, March 4th, at 6pm. It will be held at the Microsoft office in midtown. If you would like to attend, let us know, and we will put you on the RSVP list.

There will be a second info session at USV on March 20th at 6pm and Kevin Wang, founder of TEALS, will be talking at the NY Tech Meetup on the evening of March 19th as well. So if you can't make next monday evening, there will be a few more chances to learn about this amazing program.

In other "CS in NYC schools" news, the the Dept of Education is rolling out a CS curriculum in 20 middle schools and high schools this fall. The Mayor will announce the 20 schools that are getting this CS curriculum today. There will be participating schools in all 5 boroughs. Approximately 50 students per school will participate, so this program will reach around 1,000 students, starting this fall. 

And there are a number of other interesting programs bubbling up all around the city which I can't or shouldn't talk about yet. All of this happening in addition to the dedicated school model (AFSE) that I have written about a few times here at AVC. This is all a reflection of the dedication of folks in City Hall and the DOE to bring more CS opportunities to our kids here in NYC. It's a fantastic thing and I am very excited by all of this.

NOTE: MBA Mondays is taking a break, probably for just this monday, but it could be a bit longer. I need to figure out where to go next.

Last night we passed our goal of raising $50,000 for teacher's projects that bring families closer to the classroom. The Gotham Gal and I are delighted. This has been an amazing gift that all of you have given us. Almost 10,000 students and their families will benefit from your generosity.

This is the fifth monthly campaign that this blog community has done via Donors Choose. In past years, we've raised about $20,000 each year from about 200 donors. This year, we raised more than $50,000 from 314 donors (and counting). That's a big step up!

We will leave the Giving Page and blog widget up for the remainder of the month. Hopefully we can raise a bit more for classrooms. At the end of the month, we will wrap this up, I will write a final blog post with the stats on the campaign, and I will list all the donors and link to their twitter handles if we have them.

On November 9th, from 6-8pm in the USV Event Space, the Gotham Gal and I will host a meetup for all the people who donated in this campaign plus some of the wonderful people from Donors Choose who make it possible to do this. We will get a Meetup page up shortly so people can RSVP for that event. It will be limited to those who gave in this campaign.

I talked to Charles Best, the founder and CEO of Donors Choose, about this campaign last week. He said that there are only a few other communities in the world that can rally around a Donors Choose campaign like this. This is a special place and you are special people. I am so gratified to be the "bartender" of this joint.

On August 1st, we launched the "Fifty For Fifty" campaign to raise $50k for classroom projects that bring families closer to the classroom.

Twelve days in, we've raised just over $27,000 from 137 donors.

That's better than half way to our goal which is fantastic.

I'd like to thank all of those 137 people for their generosity.

And in an effort to encourage more of you to participate, a few updates are in order.

First, The Gotham Gal and I will be doing a meetup in November in NYC. Anyone who gives to the campaign will be invited to attend. This will be like the meetups we've done for past Donors Choose campaigns but we'll host it in the USV event space instead of the public school cafeteria where we've done the prior ones. I will be back with a specific date for the meetup in a few days.

Second, I am going to blog the names and possibly twitter handles of everyone who gave to this campaign. I will wait until the end of the campaign to do this. If for some reason you don't want to be listed, let me know.

Bringing families closer to the classroom is such an important part of education and I'm super pleased that we've already raised $27,000 to fund those efforts. Please consider joining the campaign and getting us to our goal of $50,000.

I woke up this morning in the middle of a vivid dream. I was standing in front of a large auditorium style classroom and teaching a bunch of college students. I was calling on people. Asking questions. Making jokes. Having fun. Teaching.

I've done that before. I taught classes at Penn to help put myself through grad school. And I've done guest lecturing so many times it is like second nature. But this dream was a bit different from what I've done in the past. It felt like it was my class and I was a faculty member.

My dad was a college professor (at West Point) in addition to a long military career. I've always thought that, like him, I would teach as a profession one day. It's the only thing that really interests me other than venture capital.

But I wonder if the classroom is the best place for me to do that. At some level this blog is my classroom. I look at what Sal Khan has done with his Khan Academy and I am inspired to think of new ways to teach.

MBA Mondays is an effort to understand what is possible in a blog format and what is not. Putting concepts down in a text format that anyone can read if they can get on the web is powerful. And the comments section allows for further discussion. The comments on the MBA Mondays post are often way better than the posts.

But every time I sit down in front of group of assembled entrepreneurs, I realize that the "in person thing" is different and better in some ways. I feed off the energy of real people sitting in the same room as me. I like the back and forth. Asking questions. Making jokes. Having fun. Teaching. Just like my dream this morning.

MBA Mondays can be a burden at times. I sit down in front of the computer each monday morning at 5am and churn out another post. It is work and it is not that much fun for me. Contrast that with stepping into a classroom of a hundred or so students armed with a topic for the day. That is a blast for me.

I've been thinking about the ideal model that combines all of the above. A freely available curriculum on the web that grows and evolves over time. A physical space where people can come and take classes that are recorded and broadcast live and also available for viewing after the fact. Some version of that seems ideal. Should it happen in connection with an existing education institution (an engineering school or a business school), or should it be its own educational institution? Not sure.

But the one thing I am sure of is that teaching is god's work and I love it and I'd like to do more of it.