CARTER: OK. Well, welcome back, everyone. And I hope you enjoyed your lunch. So the next half of this day is about engaging with educators who have maybe come before you, who have taught CS50 before, and who have modified it in their own way. 

So I hope over the next-- course of our next two sessions, you get to ask questions and engage with these folks who know a lot about CS50 and a lot about their own students and their own classrooms and their own contexts. So without further ado, let me welcome in Audra who's come all the way from Utah. 

AUDRA YOCOM: Thank you. 

[APPLAUSE] 

All right. Who else is nervous? Whoo! OK. Thank you first for the CS50 team for welcoming me here today. It is definitely an honor to be here to get to talk to all of you about something I love so much. 

As Carter said, my name is Audra Yocom. I am a computer science and information technology teacher at Pleasant Grove High School in Pleasant Grove, Utah. It's about an hour South of Salt Lake. But I also work at the Success and Education Foundation, a nonprofit in Utah that works to bridge the gap in education for opportunities for our students in Utah. 

A little bit about my background. I got my bachelor's degree in technology and engineering education, earned a certificate in information technology, recently earned my master's in IT management, and now I'm working on my admin license. So I'm slowly working my way through all the universities in Utah. 

[LAUGHTER] 

One degree and certificate at a time. When I'm not working, I love to spend time with my doggo. This is Ellie. I take way too many pictures of her. And my nieces made it up on the screen as well because they're adorable too. 

I'm going into my ninth year of teaching this August and my third year at the Foundation. I love to show my students when I'm introducing myself my school pictures, just because I think it's fun that I'm an adult and I still get to have school pictures. 

So a lot of people ask me, you know, why are you still teaching when you work for the Foundation? And honestly, I just love teaching in the community that I live in and the connections that I make with my students. And so I'm going to be sharing a little bit about my teaching experience, a little bit about my Foundation experience, and how there's crossover. 

So I heard some questions earlier about maybe seeing some examples of how CS50 is incorporated in different situations. So I hope if you have questions, please ask them. I'd love to address them. 

But yeah. To get things going, if you wouldn't mind pulling out a device. You can use your phone or your laptop if you have it. There's the bit.ly and QR code. We're going to come back to this. I'm not going to tell you about it until a little bit later, but I do want some data once we get to that point in the presentation. And if you're online, feel free to do it as well. It'll just make the data even better. 

All right. While you fill that out-- it doesn't have to be super long. But now that you know a little bit more about me, I would-- like I said before, I'm going to share a little bit about my experience in both the Foundation and in my high school. I think there's been a lot of awesome technical professional development happening here, but I want to share maybe a little less technical side of teaching. 

Whether you're a new teacher or an experienced teacher, I think we're going to find some relatability here. And I think it's important, especially in the technical classes, where I feel like we have extra effort for inclusivity sometimes in those classes, things that I want to make sure we're being mindful of as teachers and educators. So I'm going to leave this slide up while I tell a couple stories, just so that you can see the beautiful faces of who I get to be with all the time. 

My very first year as a teacher, I had a student who came to me and wanted to start a Minecraft club. And as a first-year teacher, I could not fathom in my brain how I could get a video game club approved in a school, right? 

So after a little back and forth with the student, we actually decided we were going to start an autism club, because this student is autistic and really wanted to just create a community where anyone could join, whether they were autistic or not, but a community where everyone could feel celebrated. 

And so Minecraft just happened to be something that we'd probably do a lot of the time, but it ultimately ended up being an autism club. And looking back on that first year, I've always been super proud of that student for putting himself out there, for wanting to celebrate what was different about him, something that normally wasn't celebrated in a traditional school setting. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was really a defining moment in my teaching philosophy and my career trajectory. 

And so a few years went by. I changed schools. But I still happened to be that teacher that during lunch had a whole bunch of kids in her classroom playing games, right? I'm sure a lot of you can relate if you are computer teachers like I am. 

When people ask me why I became a teacher, it usually includes something along the lines of, I want to help students find their aha moment. There's nothing better I could be spending my time doing, I think, than helping people discover their capabilities. 

And I received the following email one night when sitting at parent-teacher conference. If you can't quite read what it says, this is a student of mine who-- he had been working on this project, this coding project for weeks. Like, weeks. It was-- I am so impressed he didn't give up on it. 

And sitting at parent-teacher conference, I received this email. All caps in the subject line. He was so excited to show it to me. I couldn't help but send him back a GIF of approval of being able to see what it was that the student was able to accomplish. 

Unfortunately-- ooh. Sorry. I'm getting vulnerable with you right now. That's not the unfortunate part. A few short weeks later, I received this email. I redacted it a little bit, just being mindful of our audience online. But this is the email that informed me that the student had passed away. Excuse me. 

Being in high school, in the environment we currently are in, I'll kind of let you infer what potentially happened there. This was the hardest day of my teaching career. 

At the student's memorial service, I introduced myself to his mother. And we'd never formally met, but as soon as she learned who I was, she immediately told me that my club at school was one of the only places the student felt connected. And-- sorry. I'll be OK in a second. It was then that I knew what I was doing in my classroom during lunch with students, letting them have a place to be, letting them celebrate their differences, it was way more than I thought it was. 

So the Cyber Vikings Club was officially born. Before that, it was pretty unofficial. But by giving students a cool-- a cool name, a club charter, a cool logo, and yes, even letterman jackets, it just really helped legitimize what we were doing. 

And the audience that I serve in my school is typically the students that maybe don't have an opportunity to represent their school in a public way, doing something that they love. And it has just been so much fun, bringing this opportunity to them and celebrating them and making what they're doing in the tech world public for their parents, for their peers to see. 

And anything that I do at the school, anything tech-related-- you know, esports, I've talked a little bit about that. Cyber Vikings. CS Honor Society, Cyber Vikings. Coding, Cyber Vikings. Cybersecurity, Cyber Vikings. It's all-encompassing. 

And we let anybody buy a jacket if they letter in something. Because this was new, the admin let me pick the lettering criteria for my students. So we've got pins for, like I said, esports, but we also have pins for the Honor Society. We've also got pins for our digital media specialists, right? We've got a lot of different roles that we've set up within our club to help things run smoothly. 

Now, people started noticing what I was doing with my students and that it was working in the sense-- by working, I mean my classes were full. My classes were fuller than they had ever been. And this is why I was fortunate that I had an administration and a district who supported what I was trying to build. 

And this Foundation, I had participated in some programs that they had done in the past. They approached me and said, hey, we love what you're doing. Let's grow this on a statewide level. Come work with us, and let's bring this to students beyond even your school, beyond your district, but statewide. 

One of the first things I did at the Foundation was send an email to the CS50 crew to see if there would be any issues implementing CS50 as part of what we're offering from a coding perspective. Fortunately, Bernie gave me the thumbs up and said it was good to go. So I was super excited because I had been using the curriculum in my Computer Science Principles course, and I knew just from my students' reactions to it and from just their depth of understanding that they got after taking this course that this would be such a good fit for trying to equal the playing field in Utah and getting more students involved in this area. 

So with the green light to run CS50 at a-- kind of in a statewide level, we decided to run a beta program in the summer of 2022 with about 30 students. And the engagement in this course was amazing. 

That same summer, I did a data request with-- oh, I missed that slide. I did a data request with the State Board of Education and found out that compared to eight years ago when almost no schools were teaching development courses, now almost all of the schools in Utah fortunately were teaching development classes. 

And so we were looking at this. I said earlier the goal of the Foundation is to fill gaps in the education system. In that same data request, I noticed that no schools were-- well, not no schools, but very few schools were teaching cybersecurity courses. And so philosophically keeping that in mind, we decided our summer program was going to shift to cybersecurity. So I was super excited when they announced the CS50 cybersecurity course that's coming out, but still wanting to utilize CS50x throughout the school year in those areas that aren't quite caught up to teaching a development course yet. 

I don't know how familiar you are with Utah. I teach in the Alpine School District, which is right here, right in the heart. Not in size, but in population it is the biggest school district in Utah. About 80,000 students, which I learned at other conferences, that is not a large district. [LAUGHS] 

But it is to me. You can go about an hour in any direction outside of Alpine School District and you're going to be in these rather large school districts that are rural Utah and there's farming communities. There are Native American reservations. 

And it is now my job at the Foundation to try and get programming to students on a statewide level and trying to bridge that gap outside of-- this whole area, the Wasatch Front right here, I would say that's where 80% to 90% of people live in Utah. So really trying to reach into those far corners of the state to provide these opportunities is the big goal here. And one of the biggest challenges I face is in farming communities or areas that are working on their infrastructure development still, convincing them that letting their kid take a development course or be on a computer for a long time can be kind of a hard sell sometimes. 

So what we decided to do was-- the program that I oversee is called Ken Garff Esports, OK? The purpose of Ken Garff Esports is to enhance and enrich scholastic experiences through and beyond gaming. What that means is we're using esports as kind of a hook, if you will, to get students interested in the tech world. 

And then once they're interested as part of the clubs that we run, now we're going to show them the coding opportunities that are related to esports. Now we're going to show them the cybersecurity opportunities, the digital media opportunities, all the different pathways that they can go through something that they're already interested in. 

Now, I don't know if you have esports at your school or how much you know about the esports scene, but please keep in mind where I started this presentation, with the goal of building connection with students and meeting them where they're at, like I said, with something they're interested in. That's really why my classes I feel like exploded as far as enrollment goes. And-- [CLEARS THROAT] excuse me. Just building that connection. 

And if it's esports for you, that's awesome. If it's coding for you, that's awesome, right? The point is connect with the students and really find a way to build that rapport with them. OK. 

Now, one of the biggest complaints that we consistently got was from rural schools and how hard it was for them to travel. Let me go back one. Oh, can I go back with this? Maybe not. 

If you recall, I said this was the Wasatch Front right around here, this area. We have San Juan School District all the way down here in this corner of Utah, Washington School District all the way over here in this corner of Utah. You can see, this is about, from here to here, a four-hour drive, and from there to here, about a six-hour drive. And taking students anywhere on a field trip is quite the endeavor, let alone a six-hour one-way trip, right? 

So what we decided to do to try and increase access for students was we held regional events throughout the state at various higher education institutions. So we've got five different areas throughout the state that we identified that would help these students get to a higher ed institution. 

And then we have the colleges share with students, here's our coding program. Here is our cybersecurity program. Here's our esports program. If you like that, it's a great club that you can join to be a part of the college community. 

And you know, I've had people tell me that it's events like this that help them see themselves on a college campus. And they never-- maybe they never considered going to college before because they couldn't see themselves there, or they're a first-generation student who didn't grow up in a home that had these things as expectations. 

Now these regional events, they culminate in a larger statewide event called the Spring Celebration. Now, again, I know the name can be a little bit misleading, Ken Garff Esports. But remember, this is all-encompassing tech. So the students will be competing in coding competitions at the regional event, and then on to the Spring Celebration. 

I love showing this picture. This was our-- this was my first year, and this was in March. This was my second year. We're at the Huntsman Center at the University of Utah. We had over 2,000 students in attendance, and it was a party. [LAUGHS] It was awesome. I'm so excited to keep running with that momentum. 

And this year-- so last year, we had, I want to say, 78 clubs registered throughout the state. We just closed applications, and we have, I want to say, 96 this next year. So like I said, it's a lot of fun. Excited to keep the momentum going. 

Jumping back to my classroom for a second, this was my three students who participated in Puzzle Day this last year. Please note the chaos. [LAUGHS] We brought in some treats, and it was our first real time participating in Puzzle Day. And while we are sitting there, trying-- racking our brains through these problems, them thinking they-- I think they went into this-- because these are three bright-- really bright kids thinking, like, ah, we'll get this done in an hour. If you've tried those puzzles-- [LAUGHS]. 

But it was so cool. As we were sitting there and talking, they came up with this idea. They were like, Ms. Yocom, can we start a coding team? And I'm like, what? Can we start a competitive coding team? And it was such a full circle moment for me after going through all of this effort to meet them where they're at, trying to hook them with something super engaging like esports. 

Right here, I've got a Rocket League player, a Mario Kart player, and some Smash players from my Esports team, and now they're asking me to do a coding team, which I just thought was super exciting. And it's going to really raise the level of what we offer this next year by giving students an opportunity-- if you recall, I mentioned most schools are teaching development. The ones that aren't we want to supplement with an amazing curriculum like CS50 and now give them a chance to show off what they can do. 

Similar to-- I envision it similar to the hackathons that were talked about earlier where they have a project and they get a chance to work on it at the Spring Celebration and then show it off to each other, show it off to their parents, show it off-- you know, if you're in Alpine School District, let's compare to what they're doing down in Washington School District. And just really have this moment of connectedness through and beyond gaming. 

So going back to this fun form that I asked you to fill out. Let's go ahead and take a look at the results. Now's your chance, if you haven't done it yet. [LAUGHS] Fortunately, Google updates in real time, right? 

So just a little fun-- now that I've told you my story, I wanted to jump back into my classroom a little bit and share this resource with you, talking about being connected with students. This form was born based on a couple things. You know, I did see Douglas. If you've watched any of his presentations and what he shared, it's a little bit inspired by what he does. 

I don't know if you love or hate TikTok, but I will say, TeacherTok has a lot of fun ideas. And then things that I had tried that did and did not work. And I ended up with this Google Form. And let's go to these responses. 

This is my bell ringer when I start class. Students know that they come in and they need to do their daily check-in. You maybe saw it in the slides or on the form that they need to do it within the first five minutes of class. Those are their participation points. It's just a really good check-in point. 

And normally, when it's not an example Google Form, it does collect their email address so that I can see who it is, right? And they know that I know who's responding to me. 

But very purposefully, I ask them about something that they're grateful for, right? Trying to get them out of their own head a little bit before we jump into some heavy curriculum. Very purposefully, I ask them kind of a silly question. What's the best kind of shoe, right? We should go back and see what the results are. I'll tell you, sometimes these questions are very controversial. Not really, but the students like to fight their opinions. 

Oh, I didn't make it a graph. [TSK] Darn it. JK, we can't look at the results on that one. But it looks like sneakers from first glance are pretty much winning. Yeah, I've already beaten myself up about 10 times in my head for saying um too much. [LAUGHS] Thank you. 

This opportunity right here, this is the most important column. This is the most important question for this form. The mood scale is cute and fun. It's not set up in a way that I can see over time. Like, that might be a good adjustment to make. It's not set up that I could see if they picked that they were sad every day. 

The thing I'm looking for when I glance at this is this column here. A lot of kids leave it blank. That's why it's optional. But if they say something to me there, I know in my head I need to email that student. I need to go sit next to that student. I need to understand that that assignment's late because that student's struggling with something that they told me about. 

And it's proven a really effective tool for me, especially when it comes to those who are less comfortable with what we're doing in class, those who are afraid to speak up and ask a question, those-- I don't know if you've watched. There's a great TED Talk out there. 

The lady who started Girls Who Code, she talks about girls will sit down to code, they will try a couple things, and then delete it. They would rather call the teacher over and say, I don't know what to code than to show them something that they've tried and admit failure. 

And something like this, while on the surface it looks pretty light and kind of funny-- some might think it's a time killer, which, it does give me time to do attendance-- it's a really valuable tool for me to build that connection with my students. It's really fun when they say something funny, when I ask them what's the favorite shoe. Maybe someone would write in something that wasn't an option. Then I can call that student out and be like, oh, Bobby likes cowboy boots, you know? 

And I just-- I really wanted to share this with you in connection with that idea of building connection with your students, building that community with your students in a technical classroom where sometimes I think it's easy to forget that side of things. All right. 

And I don't know if you noticed on the form, I did mention to students that I don't always look at it immediately. Often what happens is I look at it during my prep period. 

So I tell them, if there's something urgent you need to talk to me about, please email me. Please talk to somebody else. And I will look at it during my prep period. I will update it during my prep period. If students miss one and they need to make up points, guess how I keep the content good? They have to make me a mood scale to make up if they missed one for their participation points. 

So they find it really fun, and then I make sure that my stuff is relevant because they're making mood scales of things that they find interesting and funny. I've got-- I think I've gotten grass. I've gotten a lot of Star Wars characters. And it's just really fun to see what they come up with. 

But with that, thank you again for having me. I hope you took away two major things from my presentation. First, the importance of building connection with students. And secondly, how a curriculum like CS50, a program like CS50 can be a really great equalizer not only in your classroom, but throughout a bigger organization, even on a statewide level. Thank you. 

[APPLAUSE] 

Any questions or thoughts? I should have said that before gave you my big talk. 

[LAUGHTER] 

AUDIENCE: For your regional get-togethers, do you have programming problems you give the students, or is it more like a hackathon? How exactly does it work? 

AUDRA YOCOM: Yeah, so this last year, the way that it worked is we had one of the teachers from the state came up with some progressively difficult problems for the students to solve. We're looking at shifting that a little bit this year. Sorry. For the online audience, the question was, do we have problems for the coding competitions, or is it more like a hackathon? 

And so last year, it was progressively harder problems, kind of like a capture the flag, if you will. This year, we're looking at maybe those who participate at a regional event are getting a sneak peek of what's happening at the big state event. And so it's beneficial for them to participate at the regional level for a more hackathon-like opportunity at the state event. Yeah. 

AUDIENCE: What were some of your difficulties you found going from planning things for-- you went from just the classroom to statewide. Like, I imagine that was a pretty interesting transition. 

AUDRA YOCOM: Fortunately for me, this Foundation has been around for about 20 years, and so they already had a footprint in the schools. So that connection was there. That was really helpful. 

The next biggest challenge was-- at least personally for me, I told you Alpine School District is the biggest school district in Utah. It was very eye-opening for me to step out of that bubble and see as a state where the gaps still were. I was very fortunate in my district-- and before I worked for the Foundation, I had a half-time district-level job. 

And I would get frustrated sometimes with what we couldn't do, right? I'm sure you all understand in the IT and CS world, you're pushing up against your IT department a lot, trying to get things unblocked. I just got GitHub recently, which made CS50 so much easier. [LAUGHS] And it made me really grateful for what I had at that level. 

But I think IT departments have been tricky, but for good reason. I know that they're doing what they need to be doing. And I think that was probably the biggest awakening for me. Anything else? Oh. 

AUDIENCE: You said that esports is like your hook. What is the actual esports part of the program? 

AUDRA YOCOM: Yeah, so when my club first started, I mentioned Minecraft, right? We actually don't do a ton of Minecraft anymore. But at my new school, it turned into Smash Bros. That was the really popular one, right? That's the most popular game still statewide. We started with the Wii U in my classroom. I brought in my Wii U so they could play on it. 

As they played, they're like, oh, we want to play against other schools. And I was like, OK, I don't know if any other schools are even doing this. So I reached out to my collaboration group, as I'm sure many of you are singletons at your school. So I had to reach out throughout the district to see who was doing it. And then I had to figure out, wait, who's paying for this bus? 

[LAUGHTER] 

Right? [LAUGHS] And that's when I was like, all right, we need to be a real club here. We need to-- I hate charging money for it because I think the audience of students that we're reaching are the ones that can't pay $2,000 to be a part of band or sports or whatnot. 

So I do two-- in my personal club, I do two things, and I advise other teachers throughout the state to follow a similar model. I've got the club, which is $5 to join, and then I've got the competitive esports kids. And so the club probably has 50-plus kids in it that join because they come in during lunch, after school, and they just play. 

The competitive side of it, there's tryouts. They've got matches. And from the Ken Garff Esports side, we facilitate that. We work with some tournament organizers to facilitate it for Utah. 

But they do most of their competitions-- their week to week is online, which was-- I became really good friends with my IT department again. They love me. [LAUGHS] And then the regional events are in person, and the big state event is in person. So was there any specific-- 

AUDIENCE: Yeah, that's what I was looking for. How do you find people to compete with and-- yeah. 

AUDRA YOCOM: Yeah. I think most states probably have someone playing. And so if you start asking around, I bet-- or even-- because I know you're international. I could help you find something. Yeah. 

SPEAKER 1: We have a question from the Zoom chat, if that's OK, from Jonah. They ask, how are you able to create an inclusive learning environment within a mixed classroom, especially containing students that might learn certain concepts faster than others? 

AUDRA YOCOM: Great question. So my AP Computer Science Principles class is at the same time as my Computer Science Principles class, and it's the same time as my concurrent enrollment Computer Science Principles class. To make my life easier, they all learn the same stuff, right? I'm not teaching three different curriculums. I tell the students upfront, if you're enrolled in this, this is the credit you're getting. If you're enrolled in this, this is the project you have to do. 

And that's where I have found the CS50 curriculum has been super helpful. Because of the way the lectures are structured, the students who want to work ahead, I'm like, fine. Go ahead. Work at the pace you want to work at. You're going to have more time to work on your AP project at the end of the semester, right? Or at the end of the year. 

I do-- I loved the idea earlier about having them self-identify early on in the course so that I could sit them next to each other. And I do ask that the students who move ahead still participate in our classroom discussions because I want them involved. I go at the pace that will get us where we need to be by the end of the school year, but I allow those students to run with the curriculum if they are feeling held back. Any more? 

[LAUGHTER] 

Awesome. Thank you again. 

[APPLAUSE]