Tashia Mossman

To: The department leaders at Running Brushy Middle School

From: Tashia Mossman

Date: September 30, 2019

 

Re: Innovation Plan Proposal

 

To the department leaders at Running Brushy Middle School,

 

Our jobs as educators are not easy. We are primarily responsible for teaching content our state deems important for our grade level, but we wear so many other hats. We must do our best to catch students up on any skills they have not mastered in the past. We act as parents to students while they are at school because we are the adults they know best and trust. We must continuously be on the lookout for unhealthy behaviors and manage interactions between students. We partner with administrators and other leaders to manage the school days and keep our students and staff safe.

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While all the “extras” are important, where should our main focus lie? With the students, of course. We got into teaching to prepare students for life, whether it is teaching them to write a professional email requesting a future job interview or assigning a budget to complete a fictitious home improvement project or any of the amazing other real-world lessons we teach. So my question for all of us is, why are we limiting technology applications to students who elect to take those classes? Will they not all benefit from technological know-how? Our world continues to become increasingly technology driven. All our kids need practice navigating applications and figuring out what to do when they encounter problems. Let’s give them that!

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Computer coding and programming are not just for those interested in technology. There are numerous articles describing how beneficial coding is across the board. Learning one computer language makes it easy to quickly learn others, which opens up options to create websites, work remotely, build digital literacy, begin a new hobby, and plenty more. Coding is primarily about solving problems, which is helpful in all careers and areas of life. If we are only providing these programming opportunities to our students electing to take technology courses, we are greatly limiting the options of our other students. With our school being low in the socio-economic category overall, school is the only place most of our students will have the chance to discover these amazing and important skills.

 

I know you might be thinking this sounds monumental and overly challenging, let’s think outside the box. Can we replace any existing lessons with new ideas to incorporate coding? For example, a language arts or social studies lesson could easily incorporate our Sphero robots and iPads. Think of any story where the characters, real or fictitious, go on any kind of journey. Let’s have the students recreate that journey across a map with coding and record the algorithm. In math, we can calculate how long it takes a Sphero robot to complete a distance or have them travel in geometric shapes and plot points on a coordinate grid to represent the robot’s travels. Are students completing a research project? Let’s have them build an app to allow them to literally put their findings in the hands of their audience. All of these ideas relate to science in that students are continuously making a hypothesis, testing it, and analyzing results.

 

Our kids deserve to be prepared for their futures. We can help them. After training with Apple this past summer, I am happy to help plan and incorporate these ideas or any others you might have in mind. I’m doing what I can in my classroom and Coding Club to share what I’ve learned, but I hope to work with you to ignite interest and passion among kids who might not otherwise have the opportunity to experience this field. Let’s prepare “our” kids and show them we know they are capable of great things, despite the hardships they might be dealing with outside of school. They are worthy of it.

 

Sincerely,

 

Tashia Mossman