[gmichnikov]

As a 5th grade teacher who teaches "computer science" among other things, I completely agree that this is great news. Kids love learning about basic programming concepts, and they deserve the opportunity to be exposed to programming at a young age.

If there are any other computer science teachers on HN, I'd love to hear about what you're up to (especially if you are using Scratch with young kids).

[peterarmstrong]

I agree! I think it's possible to teach kids programming from a very young age, provided they have the right tools. I'm teaching my grade 3 son how to program, and I'm doing it by writing a book which he is following along with:

https://leanpub.com/programmingforkids

I want more beta readers though!

I've made a free coupon "hackernews" which has a 10 use limit (for individual use or any of the school packages). If you want to use it with your classes, go ahead. I'd love feedback!

[analog31]

Well, I'm not a teacher, but I've got two kids in 6th and 8th grade, who are learning programming. We've been doing this for a few years now. Both kids are proficient in reading and math, and are interested in a wide range of subjects. Oddly enough, they have radically different styles of learning.

I think it's important to be perceptive of what things kids consider to be interesting, as opposed to what we grown-ups believe to be important. The kids will be bursting with ideas of things that they want to make, and the trick is finding a way to channel some of those ideas into projects that they can actually carry out within finite time and material budgets. But I've learned that what they make doesn't have to be a full blown polished app. The pride of making it themselves trumps any adult aesthetic or ergonomic sensibilities.

Scratch is great. The animations and sounds provide enough creative space to keep kids interested for quite a while. They can teach one another. It has some practical benefits, being written for widespread installation and "safe" use. The accompanying Web forums seem to be pretty closely moderated by grown-ups, while still allowing plenty of fun chatter. The mechanism for sharing and modifying programs provides a taste of open source!

We've had fun with S4A. This is worth checking out. Making stuff dance around on the screen is all well and good, but I think that interacting with the physical world really drives home the fact that you're making the computer do something.

[platz]

Check out http://frompythonimportpodcast.com/2013/12/24/episode-016-ka... which features the "Young Coders tutorial at PyCon" . Geared towards kids at least 14 years old, it was pretty fascinating. http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2163338

[jrokisky]

How did you become a computer science teacher? Did you get a degree in teaching? I have my degree in cs and am interested in becoming a teacher and trying to find as many options as possible.

[gmichnikov]

I joined a charter school network in NYC last summer. I am working on a teaching degree simultaneously (there is classwork during the year, but the bulk of the work was/will be during the summers on either side of this school year).

I am teaching some 5th grade math and english in addition to computer science, though if the network is able to continue to grow, there are likely to be teachers teaching only 5th grade computer science in the very near future. Not many NYC middle schools (charter or otherwise), offer computer science to middle school students.

For what it's worth, my undergrad was in economics. I know enough to teach Scratch to 5th graders, though I wouldn't sign up to teach AP Computer Science. Like alistairSH, I also wonder where the computer science teachers are going to come from. Genuinely wanting to work with kids every day is more important than any of this though, in my opinion. Definitely feel free to email me if you want to talk more about any of this.

[alistairSH]

In my county (suburban DC), it was roughly (I briefly considered moving into teaching in the early 2000s): - degree in related subject, typically math (CS is/was part of the math department in the county)

- master's degree in education, or some other combination of post-graduate work that qualifies for a teaching certificate.

My degree in Economics, with a minor in CS, didn't come close to qualifying me to teach CS in high school. Not that it should have by default.

But, it does make me wonder where Chicago will find CS teachers. If they have to come from the ranks of those already qualified to teach math, that's not a very large pool.

[rickyc091]

I've found that kids can pick up on scratch, cs unplugged (http://csunplugged.org/) and html/css fairly quickly.

[MarcScott]

I teach CS in the UK to 11-18 year olds. CS has recently become core in the UK for all students up to the age of 16. I start the kids off with a Scratch at first, then move on to a little HTML/CSS/JS. After a year or so we start teaching them Python.