New computer science class at CHS uses tech industry professionals

Cascade High School teacher Dane Lewman is teaching a new class this semester, Intro to Computer Science. Like he did in Manson, Lewman is enlisting help from the TEALS program, which stands for Technology Education and Literacy in Schools. 

It involves having tech industry professionals help teach the students over the internet via Skype. When he used the program in Manson, Lewman said it went over well with the students. 

“I absolutely loved it, loved the thought process of it, loved the environment, loved bringing people in from the industry to just dump their wealth of knowledge on the kids,” Lewman said. “When I moved to Cascade, I knew it was something I really wanted to get going here. There was a lot of support from everybody to get something going like this. At the end of last year, we made contact and just rolled from there.”

All the kids log into laptops. Lewman will project overhead what is going on that day. Whomever is teaching the lesson, they will make that contact, show slide decks, everything. The kids all have headsets. The teachers can respond individually or to the whole group. 

Lewman just maintains the classroom, monitoring what happens in the classroom, be that hands on component for the guys on Skype. He said they work as a big team to get the kids what they need. 

From his experience, the students react well to this because they know it is real. 

“Instead of having me going through this content. Now we have people from industry that are using that content everyday. They think it is some of the coolest things they’ve done, just because they get that contact with people,” Lewman said. “I think it is huge added benefit for these guys to volunteer their time every morning.”

Cascade High School has had computer science before, but that was a gaming class with a few computer science basics. Lewman said that is definitely driven by the computer program you are using, instead of programming a language, like they are doing. 

The class is Monday through Friday. Currently, there are 15 enrolled which is a good number for Skype, he said. 

“Each kid has a laptop and a headset. The laptops all have cameras. The way Skype for business works, it allows you to talk individually, so they can do one-on-one chats with the kids or they can talk to the whole group or give specific feedback to one kid. It works really well for how we have to do things and what we’re trying to accomplish,” Lewman said. 

At the first of class, the software engineers that will be teaching came to class to meet the students face to face. Jeff McCashland is software engineer at Microsoft. He said he enjoys participating in the TEALS program. 

“It’s a volunteer program to get professionals in the technical areas to volunteer and help develop computer science programs at high schools. They go into a high schools that don’t have any computer science program and they start by teaching the program with the teacher and then move to a co-teacher, which is what we’ll be doing, with both the teacher and the volunteer teacher,” McCashland said. 

There are two co-teachers and two teaching assistants that trade off each week, McCashland said. 

“We work with the teacher, and later it moves to where the teacher is teaching the class. We help out in the lab. Once that program is developed and the teacher can carry it out, we move on to another school,” McCashland said. 

While this is a beginning computer science class, McCashland said they also have Advanced Placement or AP courses. 

“Those courses are geared to tests to try and encourage students to get into the technical fields. There’s a particular emphasis to minorities and women getting into technical fields,” McCashland said. 

Doug Jordan is also a software engineer at Microsoft. He said he has few friends which have done this before and thought it was rewarding. 

“I sort of dabbled with the idea of going to grad school and becoming a professor. I thought this would be chance to try out teaching,” Jordan said. 

Jordan said he has been a TA in a few classes, but never taught a whole class. Using Skype to teach the class will be a new challenge. He said they had a lot training this summer, talking about the challenges and some of the strategies they can use to work with kids. 

“It’s not going to be hard to teach. We’re going to work with the TA to make sure they aren’t playing games. If I introduce a concept, do they get it? In a classroom setting, you might get some feedback from judging body language. We have to use some other strategies,” Jordan said. 

Jordan said they can speak to any individual student or the whole class. There is also a camera on the whole class, but it is a small screen. He said he would probably do his teaching before going into work. 

Ian Dunn can be reached at 548-5286 or editor@leavenworthecho.com.