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3 ways to get every student coding

nstead of starting with an elective for computer science, create a class that is required for all students. Better still, integrate it into the core curriculum for a math or science class, or maybe even art.

day it is integrated into a required class called CSTEM (the C stands for creativity, collaboration and computer science)

Let's start with the secondary system. As this level of education becomes significantly student focused, there are many of us in the system who fear we are coddling students in the extreme and not preparing them at all for the realities of the work world or college/university. Here are samples of policies, largely instituted by the Ministry of Education, that added together, have lead to concerns re: coddling.

•Late work: Student work is not penalized for lateness. Late work is viewed as a behavioural issue, not an academic one. •Plagiarism: This is also seen as a behavioural issue, and usually does not result in any academic penalty, even in a grade 12 University level course. •Evaluation: Policies are moving away from grades being derived from an average of all student assignments in favour of a more general approach that reflects "most recent and/or most consistent" achievement. •Lower limits: Students getting failing grades are assessed by this policy which requires teachers to give a mark of 30 to students who are, on paper, achieving anywhere from 1-29 per cent. This is designed to 'give them hope' of success. •Credit rescue/recovery: A policy designed to give students who fail a course the opportunity to make up key missed work with the goal of achieving a passing grade. •Memorization: The idea of students actually memorizing material is viewed as "old fashioned" and is rejected in favour of "inquiry based learning'." The world of the university student is decidedly different, as evidenced by their policies. •Late work: Most courses do not accept late work. Period. •Plagiarism: This is viewed as academic dishonesty, and harsh academic penalties are in place. •Evaluation: Most courses feature few evaluations that are weighted heavily, and grades are based on the average of all assignments. •Evaluation: The move toward knowledge-based evaluation is epidemic. Exams, even in courses like literature studies and philosophy, are commonly multiple choice and short answer exams.

•If students are trained for the 14 years they attend school that there really are few consequences to academic problems, how will they fare in the much more rigorous world of post-secondary education? A history professor recently asked me what we (high school teachers) were doing to our kids.

In my mind, a solid 4 rating means that your adult professional embraces feedback, both formal and informal and has strong systems and processes in place that encourage feedback - things like annual faculty,  parent, and board surveys, intentionally designed evaluation processes for students, faculty, staff and leadership that happen at minimum annually, but even better quarterly, regular audits of programs, curriculum, pedagogy, time and space.  Other good signs that your culture supports feedback might be meetings that end with questions like, "How are we working together as a team/department?" and "What can we do to get better at this work?"  and school leaders who ask their reports with genuine curiosity,  "What can I do to better support your work?"  "What do you think about this idea?" or "How did this meeting go for you?"

What if you spent a week "playing anthropologist" with the following question in mind: "What evidence do I see that our adult community has a strong culture of feedback?"