I think that taking a break from things every so often is absolutely necessary to maintaining sanity and motivation. The past 2 weeks, I took a break from my 100 days of web projects. I spent that time camping with my family in New Mexico. It was really nice and we had a ton of fun.

Now it’s back to work. I finished the lesson on SQLAlchemy this evening. Wow, lot’s of information, and I don’t know how much I really understood. I definitely don’t feel like I could reproduce the application without re-watching the entire video series. As this 100 days of web program goes farther and farther, I feel like I am retaining less and less information. I think it’s mostly because it’s outside of my comfort zone. I really want to find a project to work on to hone my skills, but I’m hesitant to get involved with anything until after the full 100 days.

As for my curriculum plans, well I took a break from that as well. I’m still not sure how I’m going to do things with my CS 1 class this year. I got an e-mail from CodeHS about a new CS 1 for Texas course they’re rolling out. I want to take a look at it to see what they think CS 1 looks like. I may end up using their stuff which is in Javascript. My biggest problem with Javascript for new programmers is it seems to severely lack in the debugging feedback loop. Also, I really really like Python. I need to keep an open mind though. I suppose I could use Javascript in CS 1, then Python in Advanced CS, Java in AP CS, and then let students choose their language for CS 3? It’s worth exploring.

I received a nice binder from College Board with their new AP CS framework. It’s nice to see that they are going to have online resources for teachers/students to use including multiple choice practice sets. I haven’t done a deep dive into the curriculum yet, but what I have looked at seems promising. I’m not terribly worried about my AP CS class. The students in there will be motivated and hard working for the most part. It will be their 3rd or 4th year programming (all but 2), so picking up Java should be pretty straightforward for most of them. I think the hardest part will be keeping them challenged so they don’t get lazy. That’s where UIL problems come in I think!

My “Advanced CS” classes (2nd year) will be modified from last year. I don’t think I’m going to start off with circuits this year, though I’m not sure what we will start with. Probably a bit more time on Git/Github. I need some offline ideas though, so probably some flowcharting.

The next month is going to fly by, so I hope to use that time to relax but also get a little bit of work/planning done. I don’t want to burn out before the school year starts, but I also don’t want to lose all of the great things I’ve picked up over the past few months.