Originally published on KCET"s Open Classroom 

I get annoyed when my students tell underclassmen interested in entering the Tech Academy that my computer science courses are easy. They say this because almost everyone gets an A or B in my class. I ask my students if they have learned in my class. Oh yes, they say. Often they remark that not only have they learned so much but that my class truly helps them prepare for the world outside of school. So then, I say can we come up with words that are more accurate than easy. Relevant, informative, important are just some of the few additional words they choose instead. It is a class where they succeed, a class where they create, a class with a direct connection to their future.

I recently spoke to an old friend from high school, who just sold his third tech company - this one to Apple. If you use money as a measure of success, then he is one of the most successful people to graduate from my high school. However, as a student he never rose much higher than a C+ average. I asked him how he thought our high school grades correlated with his life as a tech CEO and he validated every aspect of my teaching philosophy.

My friend said for his next company he is looking for people he enjoys working with. People who can share ideas and collaborate. He now consults with growing companies and says the biggest issue companies have is that they lose their ability to communicate and problem solve as a team. Departments get closed off and people forget they need to work together. If everyone is out for themselves companies will fail where teamwork is integral. I am trying to instill, reward, and celebrate the communication skills desperately needed in the workforce instead of isolating my students with tests.

I have given a lot of thought to how and what I teach. Yes, it is the rare student that gets a D in my class but that is because I am passionate about getting every single student to take themselves seriously and to produce work that they are proud of and make them see their accomplishments. My students get credit for the experiences and production of work. They are beginning their technological and digital experience. I want them to feel success. I want them to value the process and take pride in the effort. I don't want to shoot down their hard work with fails before they have a chance to get their footing.

My students rarely get homework especially since in the underrepresented community of Title 1 students where I teach at Foshay Learning Center, a k-12 span school in South Los Angeles, access to technology plus the time and space to do the work is a rarity. I myself don't like to do work at home, I want to accomplish my work during my working hours and I have the same expectations for my students. I also track their progress inside my class almost every time we meet through Edmodo.com - a free online classroom that stores and tracks all their work digitally. I don't take kindly to students wasting time in my class and often make them pause and discuss their work with their classmates. I also give credit for progress and not just the final project.

By the first semester of their 10th grade year (the first of six semesters I spend with my students) everyone has completed and updated a resume, built a website using HTML about a famous historical leader and made at least 3 presentations about an ethical issue in technology, explaining how and why to use a web 2.0 website (a website that usually involves a log in) and researched and analyzed various technology someone should buy given a specific scenario. All of these items will be included in their online digital portfolio that will begin to build at the start of the second semester for 10th grade. In my two sections of 76 10th graders, every student completed every one of these activities. Not all of them to the same level of success but still quite an achievement.

So yes, my students tend to get good grades in my class and that is because they have worked hard, communicated, and problem solved as a community to help each other get the work done. My job as a teacher is to support my students along the way. Show them what is important in their research and writing. Encourage their thinking and troubleshooting. I don't believe it is my job to set a bar high up in the air and then shoot them down and fail them when they don't jump as high as I think they should according to my timeline. They will have to jump high on their own when they leave school. Instead, I am the coach training them. Getting them ready to compete - school is the practice, not the end of the final competition.

Instead of my grades judging and reflecting the student work, I give the students credit for writing up reflections when they turn in a project. This includes their process and changes they would make if they do it again. Often I will give them a day or two after they have received my grade to go back and make those changes. In the workplace you would not fail and give up on a project, it is a constant cycle of working, revising, and reviewing.

I also ask my students to evaluate how they used effective communication, personal and social responsibility, problem solving and technological literacy. These are the school wide learning goals - the skills that should be incorporated in every class. These are also the skills that are necessary to be a good employee on any job.

Without worrying about their grades too intensely my students have the space to reflect and improve upon their work. I bring in business partners and create real life scenarios so that they can see how their work would play out in the real world. They present marketing campaigns to ad executives in the company's conference rooms. My students go on interviews, job shadows and participate in our internship fair where the impact of the experience sticks with them more than any grade.

The students in my class are awarded differently than with grades. Most will get A's and B's but the best are recognized with awards, scholarships, college admittance and jobs. I currently have four students who are recognized as a national winner and national runner up for the Aspirations in Computing Award from the National Center for Women and Information Technology. In my senior class of thirty five students, twenty nine of them placed in the top 60 as juniors in an International Python Competition. Many have received internships and two of them earned scholarships to the National Leadership Conference in DC. The list goes on and on. What's important is that every student has a digital portfolio showing off their skills, work and accomplishments. My grades will never stand in the way of my students' success. Instead I'm teaching them to thrive based on their own merits and to seek out and take advantage of opportunities that will only add to their continued success.

Originally published on KCET's Open Classroom

It is the teacher's job to engage the students and provide an environment for learning -- it is the students' job to try. Sometimes it is scary to try when we are unfamiliar with new material. We are vulnerable and insecure. This is true for adults, and it is true for our students.

I run a three year Technology Academy at Foshay Learning Center, a low income K-12 span school in South Los Angeles. I teach students from 10-12th grade and work with an advisory board and mentors to create a program that educates my students how to navigate college and career. I expect my students to be new to most of the material I present them in my digital computing courses. I build in class time for experimentation and exploration. Many of the projects we do require iterations for improvement, just as many writing assignments require multiple drafts. My expectation is that students will struggle and not be confident. I know that learning takes time, and not everyone learns the same way, or enters with the same amount of previous knowledge. My only requirement for my students is that they try. I am teaching them to learn through trial and error, since that is how most people learn on the job and in life.

I constantly verify that philosophy when I check in with my business partners. Recently, Douglas Sellers, one of the business partners who is the Chief Technical Officer of a start-up company, told me that he tells all his junior programmers that they need to be comfortable with failing. He expects that they will try and fail at least three times in a row in order to get it right on the fourth time. In fact, the programmers are encouraged to throw out work at the end of the day if it is not going anywhere, and try again the next day. His programmers, including himself, participate in paired programming for at least a few hours every day. This means that they actually work on a program together; they are not isolated in a cubicle working alone. They gain confidence talking through ideas and eliminate the fear of being wrong. They find their mistakes at a quicker rate and they problem solve more effectively when they talk and share what they are doing.

If this is what is happening in the real world, shouldn't that also be what is reflected in my classroom? I don't want my students to suffer outside of the classroom because they were never pushed out of their comfort zone. I don't want them to feel like a failure because they did not learn how to try. I want my classroom to be a place where they build their confidence through asking questions, working with each other, and checking in on a regular basis to be sure their tries are heading in the right direction.

I learned quickly as a teacher that one of the worst things that can happen in a classroom is when you give students an extended period of time to work on something, only to see that they were lost at the get go, and all you can do is fail them for poor work. I have seen this happen in large projects in all subjects across the matrix. This is frustrating because most of the students at my school will not ask questions along the way -- they will just turn in bad work, or worse, nothing at all.

It is not the fail that they fear -- it is the exposure, the vulnerability of the try. Failing without trying means that they can provide excuses: "The teacher didn't explain it well," "I didn't try it in the first place," or worse -- "I was lazy," or "it was boring."

Let's talk about my student Juan, a soon to be senior. Juan, like many of my students, actively dislikes being vulnerable and navigating the unknown. However, unlike most of my students who will shut down and stop working and just wait for the next instruction, Juan likes to procrastinate by challenging me. He would rather antagonize me and cause a classroom distraction than focus on the directions and try something he may not have done before. He once loudly complained to me that I don't teach him. He said all I do is give him challenges that he has to figure out on his own, when I should be in the front of the room telling him how to do something -- you know, "teaching him."

Not quite, I responded. How do you think it is in the world outside a classroom? In my experience, a boss does not usually stand behind you and specifically tell you how to do your job. There is no permanent guide that tells you how to make every decision before you even begin. Yes, I do give my students challenges that they may not know exactly how to do -- that is how the world challenges all of us every day.

Even though my students may not know exactly how to do something, I always point out all the tools they have in order to begin trying. First, they have access to the Internet where almost anything can be researched. We spend a lot of time in class learning how to effectively manipulate our searches in order to get the most directed and focused results. This is an important step, since we all know we really only look at the first 3-5 links once we type in our search parameters.

Second, I encourage them to talk to their neighbors so they can strategize together -- much like the paired programming in a tech company. One of the things we do in 10th grade is a problem solving unit in my Exploring Computer Science course, with which we learn to get comfortable with working through a problem, and coming to terms with the fact that there might be multiple solutions or different paths to getting at the solution. This unit is amazing because it begins to nudge most students out of their comfort zones, and gives them experience with trial and error as well as working with each other.

In addition to these tools, at the end of class periods I often have my students turn in what they did for the day. This occurs especially at the start of a project so I can see where they are headed. This is not for me to tell them if they are right or wrong; instead, this way I can see the common mistakes or praise the students, and have them present innovative work and ideas to the rest of the class.

This chart illustrates why when a student asks me a question, I will often send over a student who just figured it out a few minutes ago
Another thing that bothers my students is the time it takes to figure something out. Trying something new is slow. It takes time. My students will try something for about 5 minutes before they start grumbling that it is too hard, too confusing, too complicated. A job is about endurance and patience. Most work projects take a lot of time; students cannot expect a quick solution outside of a classroom. Not only do they need to build their confidence through trying, but it also helps build endurance, patience, and stick-to-it-tiveness -- which are all critical skills necessary in life.

Most recently Juan made a game in Adobe Flash. I gave him tutorials to help guide him in his progress, with animated GIFs to illustrate how it will look on his computer. He got very invested in this project. The first time he tried to program part of the game, it did not work. He quickly got confused, and then frustrated -- and then he got angry. I recognized his feelings -- I get angry as well when I am frustrated, and often would like to blame others. He kept calling me over to fix it for him. I kept trying to send other students to help review his work with him -- he wanted nothing to do with them. I then told Juan to turn in his work to me so I could review it and then help guide him to a solution. He did not like this option. "It's not done," he said. "It doesn't work so I can't turn it in."

In the end Juan found his mistake, on his own with a little redirection from me. He was puffed up with pride when he figured it out. He came over to explain to me what he had done wrong the first time around. He volunteered 10 minutes later when I told him there was a student with a similar issue. Would he have the same confidence if I had just told him what to do? Would he have felt the same excitement of getting his game to work on his own? Would he have actually learned?

Life is not a multiple choice test. Life is not eyes on your own paper. The choices that we make, how we manage our time, how we work productively and proactively with others, is left up to us. It is hard and challenging, and not always as clear as running a Scantron to see the percentage correct. However, I do know that the way I teach will at least give my students a frame of reference about how to respond when they navigate life on their own, without me or any other teacher telling them exactly what to do and how to do it. This method of trial and error will help their confidence, their inquiry, and their endurance. I teach my students in order for them to be successful human beings outside the classroom. The fear of trying gets in the way of success, and therefore we work together to conquer those fears.

"Were those video game guys really just here to talk about our high school class?" 

"Yes," I answered. "That was the whole point of the meeting."

"Wow. It is just that they seemed really interested in our class."

"Yes, I asked them to come. I don't want to teach a course in video game development without feedback from experts. It is important that what we learn reflects the same process and necessary skills in the gaming industry."

This conversation took place after I had some students sit in on a meeting I held with professionals in the Video Game industry. I am the lead technology teacher at Los Angeles' Foshay Tech Academy—a 150-student school-within-a-school at Foshay Learning Center  - and currently co-writing a curriculum to make a video game course available for other high schools to offer that will count in the students' GPA towards college. We reached out to experts to give feedback about the pacing and projects of the course. I had the students begin the meeting with delivering elevator pitches about board games they created and game tested with elementary students. I then invited the students to stay and listen while the meeting moved on to discuss the curriculum mapped out for the rest of the year. 

This is not the first time I have brought experts into my classroom or asked them to review my curriculum.  I bring professionals in all the time to talk to the students about their careers - we begin with the guests introducing themselves and a time they failed or took a risk. I also hold mentor days for the professionals to come in to discuss their interviewing experience, review resumes and edit student digital portfolios, cover letters and personal statements. I also have my 10th - 12th graders present their final projects to a team of professionals at least once a year. For the seniors that means going to an ad agency and pitching their campaigns to a team of advertising executives. For the sophomores and juniors it often is sending their final websites and programming games to the professionals digitally and they get virtual feedback through online forms and emails.

The purpose behind bringing professionals into my class is threefold: 

1. Networking opportunities for the students; My students are largely first generation to go to high school in America and they have big dreams for their careers. This gives them the experience to learn how to communicate with people outside their own tiny network and expands that network with professionals who can help them navigate into various careers through building up their digital portfolios, accepting informational interviews and reaching out to them when opportunities occur. We have had students chosen as game testers, web designers and interns this way.
2. Real world critique that maybe the students will actually hear . Most of the time, I have already given similar points or advice as the mentors, but I think I sound like the teacher from the PEANUTS cartoons to them. These experts add gravitas and truth to what I teach or connects to a student in a new way that did not work for me through a large classroom setting.
3.  The experts give me advice about what I need to adjust in order to match real world career expectations. I may no longer an expert in my own classroom,  but I have enough sense to bring in the experts to help guide my class in going in the right directions as I get the students prepared for jobs of the future. Technology is constantly changing so we try to stay relevant in the types of projects the students create. 


I model what I teach about the importance of networking and peer editing.. As a classroom teacher, I am constantly networking for my class. I tell everyone I meet what I teach and if they show interest I ask for their emails to include them on my mailing list when we have events and opportunities. Most of the people on my list of partners have come from those people who come check out my school through our mentor days and mock interview days. More often then not, those same people start connecting me to their friends and colleagues as well.

The game designers that were part of my meeting all came to me through my networking contacts, I did not meet any of those people on my own. All of them who attended the meeting then conducted an impromptu Q and A with my juniors and asserted that they would come again to hear game pitches, look over resumes, critique game design and answer other questions. I may no longer be the expert in my classroom, but the students still get expert advice.