By Chris Stephenson
As a professional community, we need better idea of how many computer science teachers are also involved in informal education. I have a sense that there are many of you doing this work with no funding and even less recognition, and we need to change this.
Recently, CSTA sent out an email asking teachers to complete a survey put together by our friend Holly Yanko at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell to help us get a better handle on this. Even once we have this information, we will need to do something to fundamentally change the paradigm we’ve been working under.
Many years ago when one of my friends was looking for her first teaching job, every school that interviewed her asked her the same first question:
“What sport do you coach?”
The possible negative conclusion you could draw from this question is that schools often value sports coaching above teacher qualifications. The more positive spin is that schools believe that extra-curricular activities provide highly valuable learning experience for students.
And if this is true, shouldn’t academic coaching be valued just as much as, if not more than, athletic coaching?
This was exactly the wavelength that Terrel Smith and Don Domes (of the Oregon CSTA chapter) were on when they thought up the eChamp grant program.
Engineering CoacHing And Mentoring Program (eCHAMP) uses a model analogous to high school athletics. Teachers receive stipends in return for serving as coaches of engineering teams. These engineering teams attend a regional or statewide competition to share their results and compete for awards, and benefit from the learning, inspiration, teamwork, scholarships, and rewards that competitive activities provide.
The eCHAMP coaching initiative was successfully piloted during the 2008-2009 school year in five Oregon school districts and leaders are excited to expand the program to more districts. The grants pay half the stipend cost for teachers to serve as engineering coaches as well as costs for first-year materials and equipment to start new programs. There are numerous team programs already in place for schools to adopt, including FIRST LEGO League, FIRST Tech Challenge, FIRST Robotics Competition, Lemelson-MIT InvenTeams, and Oregon Game Project Challenge.
Several schools in Oregon have now received funding under this grant program and the teachers note that this eCHAMP is placing robotics team students on the same platform as other varsity athletes, changing perceptions about what a team sport can look like, and most importantly, retaining the coaches who make it all happen.
I know that it may be unrealistic to expect that academic coaching will ever be as well-supported as sports coaching, but these folks in Oregon have developed a really good model that makes a start at providing much needed support.
Chris Stephenson
CSTA Executive Director
With thanks to Ron Tenison for reminding me about eCHAMP!