WeTeach_CS Professional Development Opportunities Closing Soon!

[Damian Hopkins]

WeTeach_CS Professional Development Bring STEM Training to Rural Communities with Project ROCS! Research shows that rural districts in Texas are less likely to offer STEM courses than their urban and suburban counterparts. To tackle this shortage of opportunities, WeTeach_CS is seeking partners to lead workshops aligned to the Microsoft Farm Beats curriculum as part of the Rural Opportunities in Computer Science (ROCS) initiative. This resource has been aligned to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills for Agriculture, 6th grade Technology Applications, 7th grade Science, and 8th grade Science. Approximately 12 awards will be made for this project. Interested in partnering with us? Apply today! Applications close October 21. Accepted applicants will be notified no later than November 4. “In rural communities, jobs are evolving due to technological advancements, so it’s important for rural teachers to learn hands-on STEM/CS pedagogy because this approach nurtures entrepreneurial thinking and shows students how technology can be used to solve local problems. Through FarmBeats for Students, participants learn how AI and data analytics apply to real-world agriculture scenarios like preventing world hunger and can teach those lessons to their classrooms.” — EPIC Partnership Coordinator Sheryl Roehl WeTeach_CS Secondary Certification Prep Applications Closing Soon! Despite the Texas State Board of Education mandating that all high schools offer a computer science (CS) course, recent data shows that less than half of the high schools in Texas are not offering this content to their students. The most significant barrier to providing this content to the next generation workforce is having sufficient numbers of qualified and certified computer science teachers in all state regions. In response to this need, the 89th Texas Legislature passed the Texas Computer Science Pipeline Initiative to address this critical shortage. As a part of this enterprise, the WeTeach_CS program — housed in the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin — is seeking Texas Institutions of Higher Education and Texas Regional Education Service Centers to join the WTCS Secondary Certification Hubs project. This project will recruit and train in-service Texas teachers in the pursuit of adding a teaching certificate by challenging and passing the CS 8-12 or EC-12 Technology Applications TExES exams with the intent of teaching computer science course(s). At least half of the hub’s participants must be on the CS 8-12 Pathway. Interested? Apply today! Applications close November 5. Accepted applicants will be notified no later than November 14. “Texas trails other states in percentage of schools that offer CS, so if we want to remain a leader in the innovation economy, we must do a better job making CS education available to all our students.” — EPIC Director Carol Fletcher The University of Texas at Austin Texas Advanced Computing Center Expanding Pathways in Computing | WeTeachCS.org Twitter: @weteachcs | WeTeach_CS Facebook | WeTeach_CS LinkedIn | WeTeach_CS Instagram | WeTeach_CS Threads | WeTeach_CS Bluesky Subscribe to our newsletter. If you would like to unsubscribe from WeTeach_CS emails, please click here.