Georgia Tech Grad | 14 yrs experience teaching Comp Sci | AP CS A

Christina S.

I started my journey with CS in high school, where I took AP CS A as a Senior and scored a 5 on the AP Exam. With that score, Georgia Tech gave me credit for CS 1301, a course in Python. AP CS A was, and is still, taught in Java, so I never received a formal education in Python and did ultimately teach that to myself. It further enforced my love of CS in the end, and in 2015, I graduated with a BS in CS from GT. Over the last 10 years, I've attended one professional development a year, on average, and I believe in staying current with content and pedagogy. My current passion is quantum computing, and I’m working to bring that into my classroom at the high school level.

During my time at Georgia Tech, I was an undergraduate TA, teaching a course in MATLAB for 3 years. In my 5th year, Pace Academy hired me to teach a Post-AP elective, Data Structures & Algorithms, and I was hired on full time the following year. My first high school class, one of only 2 CS offerings, had only 2 students my first year. By the time I left, I had grown the department to offer 7 courses, and two sections of Data Structures with 12 students each. After 8 years at Pace, I left to work remotely at an online coding boot camp for adults. Partnering with Amazon was an amazing experience, but I’m happy to be back in the classroom at The Westminster Schools teaching AP CS A and Intro to Coding. I also coach the FRC robotics team, and lead the Girls Who Code club.

When instructing, I believe in the “I do, we do , you do” approach, primarily. I find that modeling a problem solving strategy, implementing it with students, and then giving them a chance to try on their own with minor guidance is a great way for people to learn computer science. While I am most familiar with AP CS A, I am more than willing to work with other courses and topics, particularly surrounding the fundamentals of coding.