Educators demonstrate a broad knowledge base and an understanding of the areas they teach

professional standards for bc educators

To me, this standard means that educators show their knowledge of every subject and area they teach and learn about subjects or areas to continue their broad knowledge base.

During a day when I was observing in the class my first practicum would take place in, I watched students attempt to do a coding activity, it was the first time they needed to use 8-bit code, 1s and 0s to create an image. I saw a some students struggling with the concept. I talked to one student who said this was the first time she had ever heard of this code and had no idea how using 1s and 0s would get her an image or how it correlated to pixels.

I asked my Coaching Teacher if I could try something once I started, to see if I could help with their understanding of coding. He gave me an enthusiastic yes. I thought that using Beaded Tweets, as taught by Noelle Pepin to our class might be useful to the students.

8 Beaded Tweets from students.

On the day, I told students the story of how Noelle Pepin came to my class at the university and taught us how to use code to bead. I showed them how code was used for letters, gave each student a paper with 8-bit code for every letter of the alphabet, a piece of graph paper, showed them how to plot it out, and had examples of images from video games and computers that used 8-bit code and explained how it was used in each pixel to make a black-and-white image. Students beaded and planned to give them to siblings, parents, and many Grade 7s decided to make their beads farewell gifts to teachers they had at the school in years past since they will be moving up to high school at the end of the year. Many students made two sets, one student even wore his as a necklace for the rest of the time I was there. During this activity and after, I noticed students wanting to have conversations about coding with me. When we went to the computer lab after this, students excitedly told me they understood how to use the 1s and 0s to make black-and-white images in their program now.

I loved being able to talk to students about coding and seeing growth in their language around coding as my practicum continued. Before this practicum started, I felt a bit nervous when I heard they were in a coding unit for ADST, but as I saw what the students were doing and what they needed, I realized I had learned about coding in a way that I could pass on. Looking back at my nervousness, I am not totally sure why I was. I know I will very likely be teaching coding in the future, and while I coding was not something I was taught when I was in school, it is something I have been learning about since. This was a good reminder to me that when something is new to me, I can still have a good understanding of it, and students can as well.

Standard 7