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Discussion on: What are the skills that a public school Computer Science teacher should possess?

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Meyer Zinn

One basic example would be to create a basic HTML+CSS website

When I was in fourth grade, we took a "Computer Applications" course in which we were basically hand-held through the process of making a website.

At one point, our teacher had us start copying JavaScript games onto our sites. Some of my classmates had put one or two games up before I had found my perfect one. Not to be outdone, I quickly threw together a couple games on a hideous page and presented it to the teacher. He liked it so much that he put it on the board to display to the class.

He then decides to try out one of the games. I hadn't had a chance to tinker with it, but the name seemed cool so "Ask Mustafa" was my premiere game. It was basically an input field to ask a question and a cheesy output.

It was after the second question that my, and every kid's, worst fear was realized: one of the copy-pasted responses was something to the tune of "kiss my ass, bitch!" The teacher looked at me for a second and I, not having seen the response, held his gaze. And then the class burst out laughing. Still not knowing what had happened, I looked around wildly to see if I could figure out what had happened.

That teacher couldn't look me in the eyes again. He retired a few years ago.