Celebrating our teachers
Many schools and classrooms have looked very different this year than they have in years past, but one thing holds constant: the passion and dedication of all the teachers who work hard every single day to educate our students, no matter the circumstances.
During this year’s Teacher Appreciation Week, we want to recognize and thank the many thousands of teachers here in the U.S. and around the world who have overcome significant challenges to do the world’s most important job. When the K-12 school system was entirely upended due to the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers had to react, adapt and implement new teaching methods and instructional strategies on a moment’s notice.
We applaud and salute the teachers in our computer science community who have continued to teach this foundational subject to our students. This work and this movement are not possible without you!
Almost 2 million teachers have accounts on Code.org, with 50,000 new teachers joining in March 2021 alone! As our community grows, we want to make sure teachers know how grateful we are to you every step of the way and that we are here to support you.
In case you missed it, in April, we hosted a discussion between former U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, and Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi. They talked about the importance of providing all students the opportunity to learn CS and the discussion focused on helping district administrators support CS and CS teachers in their schools.
In February and April, Code.org also started a webinar series on how to better engage and retain Black students and teachers in computer science (see session 1 here and session 2 here). Thank you to the many hundreds of teachers who participated in these virtual events. We look forward to hosting more discussions centered around how we can better support you as computer science teachers.
We try our best to listen to your feedback to continually improve our platform. Over the last year, in addition to making detailed lesson modifications for virtual and socially distanced classrooms, we added the ability to post lessons directly from Google Classroom, reduced lag time in Progress dashboard, added support for emojis in feedback, and made many more improvements.
On a final note, if you’re a teacher who has continued to teach CS this year in a creative or new way, we want to hear about what worked for you! We’d also love to hear from parents and/or students who have stories or want to say thanks to a teacher who has been particularly impactful throughout this past year. If you know a fellow teacher who would make a great computer science teacher, encourage them to apply for our Professional Development program here.
Please tell us your story at stories@code.org, and we may feature it on the Code.org blog or across our social channels.
Every day our social media feeds are filled with teachers celebrating daily successes. Despite these difficult times, these posts show us there is still joy in teaching and learning — whether in-person or virtually — with a classroom full of students. Thank you for all you do.
-Kirsten O’Brien, Code.org
Even teachers love a dance party! 💃
A great remote teaching tip. 🗳️
Another great tip: turn the camera on but “unplug.” 🔌
A tasty way to show some appreciation. 🍪
Sticker pride is some of the best pride. 🤩
We love this strategy for making distance learning fun and engaging. 💪
CS Fundamentals has another incredible teacher. 🖥️
Collaborative tools get the job done. 🤝
