This post is to discuss additional challenges faced by CS Teachers in Washington above and beyond those faced by teachers of other subjects. Please respond to this post to share your thoughts.
Some possible challenges that you may want to comment on:
- Requirement that CS teachers must get a CTE teaching credential even if they already have another teaching credential
- Lack of infrastructure, mentoring, support from colleagues who understand computer science
- Need to support so many different courses - often with small enrollments - each semester to provide a "pathway" for CS by yourself
- Need to support other subjects in addition to CS
- Need to actively recruit for CS students against so many other subjects to keep CS pathway active
- Wide range of student abilities with little standardization in skills students get from previous grades
- Rapidly changing nature of CS Education, difficult technical nature of CS
- So many curricula choices with little guidance
- Lack of budget, hardware, software
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Lawrence Tanimoto
Treasurer/Advocacy Lead, CSTA Puget Sound (WA)
Bellevue, WA
K-12 Teacher CTE (retired)
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