I started out to write a blog on rural education in a global context (and global education in a rural context), but mostly, so far, I have been writing about computer science. In my personal journey, moving to a rural community ultimately led to my belief that computer science needs to be a core discipline for all, but that connection may not be obvious to anyone else. I have some explaining to do.
Confession: two of my biggest character flaws are the overwhelming desire to appear more normal than I actually am, and the tendency to believe I have less to offer to my community than I actually do. Well, my true self and my talents have been harder to hide since I moved to a very small town, and also I find it suits me here. It's quieter. There's loads of acceptance for different kinds of people. Things can move slow or move fast - it doesn't matter. There's a nice flow. You can get involved, and then you can take time off. Everything seems more manageable because organizations are small and nimble. There's less risk involved in implementing wild ideas.
I moved here to take a job as vice principal, to try my hand at leadership in a rural setting after many years of teaching in urban settings. I'm not much interested in power, I tend to question everything, go back and forth between opinions when making decisions, and formulate ideas out-loud, but with the right people on my team, I turned into a real leader. My confidence increased and I found myself taking initiative, connecting people and resources, supporting events and activities, and helping make really good things happen in my community.
I looked around for the first year or two, but I couldn't find the kind of teacher-expert in new technology and education that usually exists somewhere in a school system. I had always been the kind of primary teacher who surrounds kids with art, books and wooden toys, and lets the computer people worry about the technology stuff. Here, I couldn't avoid technology, because if I did, kids would miss out on some important education. Also, it's not the 1990s anymore (in spite of how it looks in schools sometimes).
So, I learned about pixels and packets, types of codes and files, about computers and about how the Internet actually works. I learned about bits and bytes and how everything is actually just zeros and ones, and that that's what digital actually means. I learned that most of the time, in the core acronyms pertaining to the Internet, P stands for protocol, and this made sense. I learned CSS and HTML, and started learning JavaScript. (Okay, I'm old. It's hard for me. I haven't given up on coding, but I'm taking a break.) I read tech blogs and all kinds of news I had previously ignored, and I forced my 50-year-old-grandma-like-kindergarten-teacher-brain to stay with all this stuff even though I didn't understand it all and it upset me (at first).
And now I am a nerd. I'm not always very good at it, but I am one. It probably is my true nature, anyway, but like I said, I have avoided facing that part of myself in the mirror for years. I embraced my inner nerd because I was the best nerd some of these kids were going to get as a teacher. They needed it. Which is a good message for teachers everywhere - whoever you really are, the kids need you to be that, and all of it. They don't necessarily need another bland, white-haired grandmother type telling them to make their letters starting at the top (although that's who I am, too, just more nerdy and colourful now).
What I realized during this journey was that the more you understand about how computers actually work, the more you understand about how to use them. If you try writing a bit of code, you understand what your software should be able to do, and what it probably won't be able to do. You also realize that there isn't a semi-god-like wizard-species living in basements and Silicon Valley making all this stuff happen for you. There is an industry, a job market, and a kind of employment that schools aren't preparing kids to join. There's a huge market, it's pervasive, everyone contacts it, and people need fundamental literacy as well as the kind of expertise that might allow them to do work or be creative in this powerful medium.
Computer Science is distinct from, but also combines well with all other literacies. Everyone will use it in their lives and their work to make things better, once they are exposed to it. And beyond that, and maybe the most heartbreaking part, is that it's magic and more magic and we aren't letting the kids see it.
And if I'm the best nerd these rural kids have got, it's a lot worse out here in the hinterland. So much is possible. So little is being done.
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