This blog post is a placeholder of sorts. I had a late night urge to explain the theoretical justification for my “figure it out” curriculum (I need a better name for it).

There are a bunch of threads I want to bring in:

• Responsive teaching: By not lecturing you are free to listen to the classroom and the students. To respond to changing conditions: breakthroughs, difficulties, and curricular deficits.
• Krashen’s theories: Admittedly unscientific and discredited but I am really inspired and believe in the idea that exposure is key to learning any language. What better way to expose students then to have them constantly trying to make sense of programs during class.
• Constructivism: Teachers cannot and should not try to pour information into students heads. What better way to have them construct their own understanding then through sensemaking activities.
• Constructionism: Have students, alone and in groups, create and present artifacts of their work and learning. Sometimes those artifacts look like completed websites showcasing personality, artistic inclination, and humor. Other times it may simply be a class list of “the rules of python”.
• Antiracism: This is something I need to work on. There are certainly reasons I think my curricular approach would support those underrepresented in CS but I need to do a lot more work to make sure this is the case and to improve my teaching and curriculum.

Hopefully, this will turn into some kind of theoretical framework paper.

At some point this week, I’ll write a blog post doing my best to detail student’s responses to the program 0 activity. I wish I had taken better notes of what happened.