Episode 123: The Five Year Anniversary === [00:00:00] Sean: Hello and welcome to Teaching Python. This is episode 123 and it's our five year anniversary. My name is Sean Tyer. I'm a coder who teaches [00:00:24] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And my name's Kelly Schuster Perez, and I'm a teacher that codes. [00:00:28] Sean: yeah, so Five years of recording the podcast. Can you believe it? [00:00:33] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I can't believe it. I honestly can't. It's probably the longest relationship I've ever been in. Just kidding. I've been teaching for 20 something years. It just sounded good. [00:00:42] Sean: we're gonna let all of that just go. There's, we don't have enough time in the podcast to, to unpack that. [00:00:49] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I'm kidding. It just like sounded great. That's like what you say, right? It is the longest relationship. No, [00:00:58] Sean: no, it's good, good stuff. This week we're just gonna talk about the last five years. Take a moment to do some reflection 'cause. That's what we do on this podcast is reflect, talk a little bit about what's worked well, what hasn't worked well give you guys a peek behind the scenes, of how it all started, how we produce the podcast, what has worked well, what has not worked well, and just talk a little bit about what five years looks like of teaching Python. [00:01:24] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Hundred percent. I know we get a lot of, questions sometimes from teachers, that come to the Pinecrest School Institute, and they ask me, what does it take to do a podcast? Even my former boss, she was saying, , I wanna do a podcast. And I thought, oh, Sean, this is a great thing to just let people know how hard it is to do a, it's easy and hard. [00:01:46] Sean: The only reason it is easy is because. As a partner, right? The only reason we've been able to keep it going this long is because we've pushed each other and kept each other going throughout the five years. so I guess the first key to success is find a co-host. [00:02:02] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. Do we wanna talk about that first, or we wanna go to our listeners real quick? [00:02:06] Sean: Let's go to our listeners. We've got some, yeah, we've got some good listener feedback. We haven't really done this for a while, but, , just going over some of the feedback we've received from listeners and Kelly, you've collected , some stuff from the last couple months actually of, listener feedback. [00:02:19] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yes, and I wanna apologize if I did not reply. I usually go into like spurts of three months and just reply to a lot of people and some of them I replied to and some might have not. So we're gonna reply to you now and you wanna take the first one? They're odd. So you can get three. [00:02:35] Sean: Yeah. So the first one is, Michael, who's, retired after 37 years as a technologist in K 12. So he has been a teacher, he's taught computer science. He's worked as a technologist, done a lot of different things. So congratulations on being able to retire and go. Pursue some fun hobbies, but, his fun hobby that he's working on is integrating electronics with his programming skills. So he says, I've always wanted to integrate electronics with my programming skills. If you've heard of anyone putting Python programmable, DIY or otherwise drones together with off the shelf parts, please do let me know. Easy to repair and other robotic integration of parts is the key. And he mentions. Elsewhere in the email that he's been working with, the, tele edu drone. He says he really likes them, but the problem is that they don't take a beating as well as he would like, especially in a classroom setting. So he wants to be able to repair them rather than having to toss them 'cause they're a little bit expensive. But also, no one likes to throw things away that are otherwise working pretty well . Kelly. I know that, when we had the Drone Blocks episode, our guest for that one, and I'm, I'm gonna look up his name here [00:03:39] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Dennis Baldwin. [00:03:41] Sean: that's right, Dennis, Dennis mentioned that he's been making a hobby out of building drones for the last. 15 years, I think. So not necessarily Python, but , there are some really great Arduino based, autopilots and controllers that you can use that would be, pretty well suited for this. You'd have to do a little bit of Arduino programming, but from my understanding is the RDU pilot. Program is pretty mature and well-built, and so a lot of it is less about programming and more about configuration and connecting things together. So I think that'd be a great place to start. And there's quite a bit of hardware that will support, running Arduino software and a lot of it's purpose built for drones. And then you can connect your other drone parts to that. [00:04:22] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, and I would say , the TSA, which is a technology society for educators, what's e or no A, what's a stand for? Whatever the T. As that. Student association. Yes, they do a competition. And the kids were actually telling me that one of their challenges this year is to build a drone. So I'd almost be curious to see what it is that the students have to use as building a drone and see if that could be extrapolated and, pieced out to, make something better because obviously if the kids not saying that they're not as keen as you, but with 37 years as a technologist in K 12, I'm sure you can build a better drone than a, a high schooler sometimes maybe never know. But it would be interesting to see what they build, some of these kids coming up in February for their challenge and see if you can piecemeal stuff into that. So that'd be something to look into. [00:05:11] Sean: Yep. I think that's a great suggestion. All right, Kelly, you've got the next one. [00:05:14] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: All right. So Jack, I picked some good ones. He just wanted us to write in and say thank you for the effort that we put into this podcast. He's currently self-teaching Python as he moves from a history teacher to a digital technology teacher in Australia. And he finds this pod has been amazing for him as he's making the transition. He's working all the way back through all the episodes at the moment, episode one. That was scary. But I do [00:05:39] Sean: To. [00:05:41] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Particularly to Kelly. So if you were in my position and needed to self-teach yourself Python, which research resource would you use if you had to start over? Oh my goodness, there are so, so many, and I wish I had all their names, but, a couple of the videos, oh my gosh, what's his name? I just went blank. That's, they should have prepared for this one. But there's a couple of videos that I send with the kids, to watch and I do like Socratic a lot just so I can get that, background knowledge. 'cause the vocabulary and the information that I didn't get that Sean got in college was very helpful and getting that, solid kind of computer science geeky side of it. Outside of the Python has been, , a really big move for me. I do have to say, and I'll do a shout out for Jillian and Bob from Pie Bites. Their newbie bites helped me along the way and they have actually been, um, they improved them a little bit more and they have a lot more information in there. So for me, I think I, oh, cx, that's what it was. Centex from the YouTube channel. He's been my favorite. And I still show all the kids his videos too, because they're short three minute long videos. So Centex pie bites. Yeah, that's probably the top ones for me. [00:07:02] Sean: Where I saw you make the most progress in your Python learning was when you would come up with something, some project that you wanted to do or something that you wanted to figure out, and you didn't know what the end looked like. So the process of, of learning and building that, gave you a lot of boosts along the way. So just from an outsider perspective, don't get too focused on the resources. It's important to have a library of resources that you can go to. But the biggest jumps in your knowledge came from when I saw you struggling to figure out, some project that you wanted to do or some problem you wanted to solve. And you would always come to me and be like, okay, here's what I'm trying to do, but don't tell me the answer. Don't tell me the answer, just wait. That seemed to be the places where the, the most learning happened for you. [00:07:42] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: And I was also thinking about this, I was thinking back to my first year of teaching. I think I did, made the greatest leap in the first uh, semester. And that was because the kids kept asking me, how do you do this? How do you do that? And then they're asking of wanting to do something made me search for that answer and having to say it to them and explaining what a video was saying actually. Progressed me a lot. I think the sixth graders pick a 10-year-old. Learn Python with them. [00:08:14] Sean: exactly. [00:08:14] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: a lot. You'll learn a lot very quickly. All right, you're next. [00:08:19] Sean: So I've got Eric, who's in his first year of sixth and seventh grade and 11th grade computer science and robotics, which is quite a spread and robotics. Just a few things. Worked in Silicon Valley for over 30 years and done computer science, enrichment classes locally for almost a decade. So he, this is a great, great point here is that even if you're not gonna be a full-time teacher, if it's something that you see yourself doing in the future, finding, opportunities to teach, even if it's in a, , side hustle equivalent, right? Teaching at night, teaching enrichment classes, finding ways to add it is a great way to get going because you have the opportunity to learn before you're thrown into the deep end of the pool. He's working for Khan Academy now and he starts his teaching job in August. He says There's nothing quite like watching kids do great things. Your reminder that there's a lot of vocabulary in computer science really helped my students and I, I've heard that come through, in a lot of places. In any time you're learning something new, just getting the vocabulary down and linking that to the concepts is, half the battle or more. [00:09:19] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: I remember the first time , we used Eric Mathis, , flashcards. Vocabulary. And I, like to blame that on the fact that I was trying to learn the vocabulary as well. Just getting those definitions in line so I could explain it better to the kids. But once we got all the vocabulary words there, it was something that just kind of flowed and then we can make up our metaphor and give our picture and everything that we, we learned we could pass to the kids. So yeah, full, full vocabulary is a must. So. [00:09:48] Sean: I agree. [00:09:49] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. Okay. Dear Sean and Kelly, thank you for a wonderful podcast about teaching Python. Just two thumbs up. It's a real treasury of ideas, tips, and insights for me. I will surely propose several topics for the great podcast. So I picked one 'cause he had a couple to give us and we actually found Dennis Baldwin from, and I didn't put his name, sorry, this gentleman, I think I'll put it back on there. He says, which platform or program to choose for my classes? This is an interesting one because with, repli. Having some changes. A lot of teachers were a little bit concerned of what's gonna happen to Red Classroom. He suggested, trinket, pie, charm, EDU, we wanna add CoLab. I really wanna add in Anaconda. 'cause with the Anaconda assistant and the cloud, they've made it really nice and of course. If you're talking about Anaconda, we definitely have to talk about EDU blocks. So there's different points of entry depending on your students. If you just want some fun one hour codes for me in the US trinket as a no brainer, you can do one hour code with Turtle, one hour code with just challenges. You don't have to go into the platform and pay for it. You can get the free Side Pie charm edu I think is for me. An easier platform as a newbie vs. Code. Though I started to get into, I know Sean's big fan of VS code. That was a learning curve I think, but they've made it a lot easier. But yeah. Anything to add? Of course, Moo, we can't forget Moo. [00:11:23] Sean: Of course. I think it's important to take a step back from this and think about this as a technologist order, as like an IT person. Like one of the things that I. Is challenging in this environment is that the school year and the needs of teachers doesn't always line up with the fast-paced world of education technology. Companies come and go, new offerings come in and they're really exciting, but then they might disappear just to suddenly as well. So it's really important to avoid vendor lock-in when it comes to the content that you are teaching. So remember that you are the teacher, you are the one who's responsible for the content. Don't become too dependent on what platforms offer us as teachers. that's easier said than done there's a ton of benefit of a lot of these platforms where they offer lesson plans and they offer the platform and they have automated testing and there's a lot of stuff that's really great, right? What happened with, with Rept was really unexpected and sad, people have been using Rept for many years to teach in a classroom setting, and it was gone within a matter of days. So really, the. Advice that I have is make sure that you retain your content. And this is also a great plug for open source education technologies like Moo, like others where you know that even if something were to happen to the people maintaining the project, the code is available and you can fork it, you can run it yourself, other people might pick it up. So the open source software is always a great thing to have in your arsenal to be able to ensure that you're not, at the whims of an EdTech startup. [00:12:57] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yep. Agree. And that was Andrew. Keep an eye on edu blocks because I know you don't have to use the block coding. And I know they're looking into adding some stuff in PIs script. They're looking to. Take the place of rep, but only for the Python side. So that's something to keep an eye out for. You wanna do the last one? [00:13:18] Sean: Sure. So this is coming from Nick and he says, I have listened to your show since episode one. I'm sorry for episode one. You probably should have skipped episode two. But, thank you for listening and being such a dedicated listener. It really , is amazing, that you've, , been a part of our community for so long, so thank you. He says, I'm not a teacher. My wife is in Palm Beach County, right where I live and next door to where Kelly lives. She's a software or he is a software engineer. Said, I wanted to say, I've taken tons of tips from your show, but episode one 12 was something I have been looking for since I started Python years and years ago as a hobby mostly. I think that was the, what did you say that was? Kelly one 12 was like the [00:13:55] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: drone blocks, I think. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Dash, dash, plotly. Dash, yes. With Adam Schroeder. [00:14:02] Sean: we are actually doing a team hackathon starting tomorrow. I might have to sprinkle a little dash and plotly in there. I'm excited about it. [00:14:08] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: absolutely. That's a great library. [00:14:11] Sean: So he said, thank you for the great shows. Thank you equally for the great topics and being real about Python. The struggles you talk about with regards to your classes, students and personal ones really shed a light on programming and Python. It's our pleasure, Nick, and thank you for, for listening for so long. We'll keep sharing and being real. [00:14:26] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, a hundred percent. All right. Behind the scenes. [00:14:30] Sean: behind the scenes, let's talk a little bit about the first recordings and. We've said this, , many times before. So , the genesis of the podcast was that we were having these great conversations in that first semester of teaching where I would talk about technology things you would talk about, teaching things, and we would bring that together. And I was learning so much from you and I hope I was able to share equally valuable. We had this realization wait a minute, we are really. Lucky, or really privileged to be able to have this other person to talk to about the challenges and , the wins and the things that we're really good about bringing teaching and computer science together. We said we should make a podcast of this, we should record this and see how it goes. I'm. Convinced Kelly that it was originally your idea to say We should do a podcast from this. I said, that's great. And then the, your next question was, do you know how to do a podcast? And I said, no, but I can learn. So we did, I think what a lot of people do, but probably more people should do it this way. We didn't go out and buy a bunch of equipment or set up anything to record. We got out, I think my laptop and we [00:15:39] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: No, it was, wasn't it, that little recording thing [00:15:42] Sean: No, no, that came later. That came later. We had little, we had a little pocket digital recorder that we used for a while with like little lapel mics and everything. In the beginning it was you and me and a laptop, and we put the laptop down on one of the tables in our classroom. I think I brought up QuickTime player and went to the recording setting and just said, record. And you and I started recording that episode. And it's still out there. You can go listen to it. It's terrible. Because we're so awkward and stilted and we have no idea what we're doing. But it's also now our most downloaded episode 'cause it just has outlasted and persisted beyond all of the other episodes. I. [00:16:18] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, and I think the initial challenges of just being recorded for me, I hear my voice all the time and I've been teaching 25 years now, and. I didn't make videos. I didn't do a lot of recordings and just having to hear my voice. And control, knowing that what I'm saying is actually being recorded was recorded, was actually very scary because sometimes, a lot of the times my brain is working faster than my mouth. So sometimes the sentences, as Sean has realized over the past five years, my sentences don't really. Come out as clear as what's the thought in my head, but he helps me to slow it down. And I think that was my biggest fear is saying them, the talking and making sure what I'm saying comes out as fast as I think it. That was always fun and getting used to writing outlines. I think we wrote more outlines in the beginning and pretty, I tried to research as much as possible to make sure that I said exactly what I wanted to say, but found out that really wasn't gonna work for us because trying to, pre organize these outlines and say what's written, it just wasn't, it wasn't us. [00:17:32] Sean: Yeah, it like, I think the more that you wrote, the more stilted it sounded because we felt like we had to read everything and no one joins a podcast to listen to people read stuff. Unless they're someone like James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman with a just an awesome reading voice. That's not us. So we found our voice after those first, I don't know, five or 10 episodes because we had a reasonable outline, a guide, and some structure to help us get going. But we didn't overwrite the work that we're doing, so we didn't over prepare. And I think that helped us a lot to find our voice and find our cadence. [00:18:11] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, and I think how it has evolved over time. I think we've gone through a lot of cycles through finding people to come on our show to back to finding our voice. It's something that with Sean not in the classroom and me in the classroom at feel like we have so much more to share with each other. Which is interesting 'cause you would think at other that, Sean and I would just share teaching, but. That relationship of having some someone, not the smartest one in the room, is that the same? Like if you're in the, if you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room? Well, Sean is way smarter than me when it comes to Python and coding, and I, I like to believe I'm way smarter than him when it comes to teaching. So we both have something that has evolved over time, and then when we add that third person in or, or fourth sometimes from our guest, it's like they've added a new feature of smartness. I know that's not a word, but smartness to our, to our podcast. And I think that is how we have evolved over time by, by realizing that we all have equal parts to share in this world. And making sure that you surround yourself with someone to share it with, to learn from. And I think that evolution of our podcast is something that, is useful for people and useful for yourself in reflection of how you should lead your life as a teacher, as a developer. Find other people to share , the knowledge that you don't have. [00:19:38] Sean: Yeah, I would. I would say that's definitely something that's become apparent as we've progressed with the show is that think both of us have gotten better in our. Areas of mastery, right? Like I've become a better technologist. You've become a better teacher. I've become a better teacher. You've become a better technologist. tHe interesting thing about this has been that it's a, there's dimensions to that. It's not a competition. We're making each other better because we have these like really strong areas of knowledge and expertise that we can share with one another. And by doing that, we each get something more out of that than what we're sharing. So it has been a really good growth and evolution over time. I would say if I had , to highlight the shape of it, a lot of what we've been doing was, our output hasn't always been consistent. It's been often and shaped by the things that are going in our professional lives and our personal lives. We haven't had that weekly schedule of here's we're gonna record at this time. We haven't been able to do that. But what we have been able to do is continue to be persistent with our. Podcast, we keep coming back, we keep recording. We might be away for a month or someone might be four weeks behind on, on publishing the last episode. But we never give up. We never stop just because we're behind. We just bring it back together and we keep going. And it's something that has, I think, for me, been a source of, of great, inspiration over the last five years. The people that we've met, the conversations that we've had, even. Especially when it's just you and I, having a conversation about something. I've taken so much away from that back to my personal life and my professional life. The way I think about things is different For having done this podcast with you. [00:21:22] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, I agree. For me as well, you said it better. Major challenges for us faced along the [00:21:29] Sean: post-production, post-production. I did wanna highlight a couple of, there are a couple milestones, not just challenges, but things that were, I think, really good highlights. I think the first big break that we caught was when we got, I. Mentioned on, Python Bytes by Michael Kennedy and Brian Kin. I think we were, we had maybe three episodes published, and they were kind enough to recognize that there was a new Python podcast in town and they mentioned it on their show. And when they did that, we saw an immediate jump in the number of downloads we got each week. And suddenly we had an audience. That was a huge milestone for us. Otherwise, maybe nothing would, none of this would've continued. But because of their kindness and their mention of us. We became a thing. [00:22:12] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, I remember, listening to Michael Kennedy. That was like a, that was a funny thing when my kids were like that, Michael Kennedy. And then the first time meeting at Picon and sending the picture of, Michael Kennedy to my kids and them knowing that. That picture was the voice in the, in my car all the time. Key milestones, significant episodes, I think. The key milestones for me personally was just ask, because I think that was something I was always afraid of. Just sending out an email to someone and saying, Hey, you wanna be on our podcast, we've had 10 episodes, and I would just send out emails left and right to two people, and I. Surprisingly, I got a lot of yeses for the amount of emails. Most of the people that I emailed would say yes, and some of the huge milestones was just having people like. Barbara Oakley, meeting Julian and Bob from Pie Bites meeting, Brian Kin and Michael Kennedy, having Will Richardson, that was like one of the teacher hall of fames for me. To have him on the show. Having John McDon, he's one of the. Teachers, educators that I've admired for quite a long time. And I think those milestones have led to other milestones where I have been on other people's podcasts and we as teaching Python have been on, a couple of educators podcasts and you can name a few of those because I'm bad with some of the names. But getting that in has been, huge, huge, huge, huge. [00:23:46] Sean: Yeah. Then the last thing I'll add here in the ma major milestones is the role of Python and the Python community has been huge. We presented at Picon and that's still such a huge highlight for me that we did that with Guido in the room with us listening to our show. I don't know that he was that impressed, to be honest, but. I just, it was like, if I had thought about it, if we hadn't done the podcast, that never would've happened. [00:24:11] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah, I still listen. I'm still remember turning my back and whispering to you. He's in the room. [00:24:18] Sean: Yeah. , it was a really great moment , and it was a lot of fun to be able to do that. And I'm really glad that we've taken the time to go, , to PyCon and meet the community. They have given back so much more to us. [00:24:31] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: So major challenges faced during the journey. We need to uncover, some major challenges. I'm not gonna lie, but you don't make any money as a teacher in a podcast. Major challenge is that we fund pretty much everything for this podcast by ourselves. If it means that we're out a couple hundred bucks, whatever, at the end of the year, Sean will pay it. [00:24:57] Sean: the, yeah, I do have to say we have our Patreon supporters and that has been a constant source of just helping to keep the lights on. It's not a huge amount of money, like it's paying for hosting charges and things like that. You and I are definitely not in this for the money. We don't have, big corporate sponsors or anything, and I think. In some ways that's been a little bit of a drag because a lot of the challenge, other challenges that we've had is because we're very much a do it yourself podcast. We use software and we use sites to help us do that. But we don't have a producer, we don't have a post-production editor. We don't have, , sound design clearly. But we have, what we do have is , some time and some, sweat equity that we've put into the podcast. But the Patreon support has helped. It's made it so that we can at least keep things reasonable in terms of what we spend on it. The challenge has been because we're not. We're not getting any money really from the podcast. There's not a lot of investment back in the podcast itself. So that means that, a lot of the delays that you have with episodes getting published or, , the , sound design, sound quality, the marketing and promotion of the podcast doesn't really happen because , there's no funding to augment that. Everything we do, like all the work you've been doing on LinkedIn to be able to grow our audience there, grow our community there is because you've put in the time and effort into generating that, you know those followers by publishing content, not by, paying to go advertise the show. [00:26:27] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. Another major challenge is sometimes, a teacher's life is hard, right? You have to find those sparks. Not saying that you're trying to have a social media positive, but if we talked about and complained about all the problems with education or with teaching or being the only two computer science teachers in the middle school, or having to be in a math department versus the computer science department, I don't know. Maybe the negativity would stick, but it's not really what we wanted to share about the journey that we were on. So sometimes. Some weeks it's really hard to find a positive, all the, a full episode of positive. That has been a struggle. At least for me because after so many years of teaching, besides the fact that the kids are probably the only reason why I love coming and waking up in the morning, it is hard. As educators we need to be okay with saying that, but having a podcast that's about negative is not really our jam. So [00:27:30] Sean: Yeah, I think we'll do that. We'll do that under pseudonyms if we have to. There's something to that, and I think that's one of the things we did early on too, was introducing the wins of the week so that we celebrate the things that are really good about the job, like teaching is hard, is one of the most challenging things I've ever done. Also one of the most rewarding. It's too easy to get hung up on the overhead, like the school that we teach at is a really good school. It is run really well. I have worked for many organizations, every organization has things that you want to be better or you want to be different or you want to change, and some of those things you can change and some of them you can't. It can be frustrating and tiring, especially when you're working so hard to make the experience great for the students. It's. Sometimes hard to stay upbeat and positive the whole time, but I, I found the podcast helped us with that because we had to find a win each week. There had to be something good we could talk about. And honestly, we didn't have to look that much further than what happened with the students, because usually the students were the ones making the positive things happen, even when things were challenging or stressful. And you know, I think. Look, we went through Covid while doing the POD podcast, right? We went through a lot of stuff and I think emerged stronger on the other side. [00:28:48] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Yeah. Valuable lessons. Besides the fact of just not saying, not taking no for an answer or not being afraid of getting a no. I think my, one of the things that I really got out of this podcast was in my search for finding guests and finding new things. I forced myself to learn some more about the libraries and the, we tried new things in the classroom. Making eighth graders make a flask. Or a dash app or having them go into all these other libraries that people were like, really, you're doing eighth graders with that? But I think that was one of the most valuable lessons is if you try it, it might work. And when it does, it's pretty amazing. And if it doesn't work, at least you learn a new lesson and you learn a little bit about a new library. So that's been a huge. Huge win from this podcast is meeting new people and trying new things. I've been flying drones all week thanks to Dennis, and it has been remarkable having all these drones in my classroom and they're coding them and they're flipping and they're taking payloads and I probably would never have tried them if, if I hadn't spoke to Dennis and found him about drone blocks. So. [00:30:10] Sean: Yeah, and it's, something really important about that, right? The experiences that you're creating both with and for your students. This is not exclusive to computer science. This is not something that we have a monopoly on, but there's this belief that, , in order for the lesson to be valuable, the students have to understand the library at a deeper level. Like, oh, you can't teach them, pandas because pandas will be too, too hard for them. It'll be too inaccessible for them. Or, you can't do APIs with them. That's really sophisticated. That's the same sort of approach that says you can't do calculus with students until they've gone through all of the other calculus classes, pre-calc, and algebra and all those things. What I found is that the only thing that matters. Is whether the student is having a valuable learning experience. If they have something that goes, wow, that was amazing, right? Or, wow, that's really insightful. Or, wow, I learned something totally new and I really like that and it's not, I. Just computer science. It's not just like I took a million rows of data and turned that into a useful visualization that makes sense to me and I think is cool. It could be like the other day I was with my son who's eight, and we found this clip of Judy Dench reciting a Shakespearean sonnet, on. On a talk show in the UK and she's doing it from memory and Judy Den is incredible. If you want, I could listen to her, recite Shakespeare all day long, but the whole sonnet was incredibly powerful. And it talked about, basically resilience and when you feel down, what brings you up and what inspires you to go forward and. What it means. A lot of this is what it means to be human right and to be despondent at times and to grow. And my 8-year-old son said, especially once I helped him understand what the words meant and what they were saying and helped it transform it for him and explain it, that was a powerful moment for him. He said, wow, that was really cool. So should an eight eight-year-old be learning Shakespeare? I don't know. Should a 12-year-old be learning pandas and dash and everything? It depends. Are they getting something meaningful, valuable, and exciting out of it? Something that subverts their expectations? [00:32:39] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Having speaking of kids, because that. That generated an idea because you learned a lot for them, right? Should they be learning a hundred percent if they want to, and I think one of the biggest valuable lessons that I already knew but was reinforced by some of our guests were that kids or young adults are amazing, and you can learn from them probably more. I mean equally, if not more than you can learn from other people. That comes to mind is Harry and Anna Wake, Joshua Lowe, Sri k Hy Srivasta. I mean, these are young people who I always tell all the time, they're smarter than me. They're the people I wanna be in the room with because these people are the people that I have been learning with and alongside. HArry and Anna were what, 14, 15? Josh was 14. 15. SREs, was a senior when we had them on our show. And these are just people that I admire completely. And they're quite younger than I am. Definitely way younger than you. I'm just kidding. [00:33:55] Sean: It's absolutely the, antidote to the kids these days sort of thing where people are like, oh, kids these days, and they shake their heads and they do that thing that every generation, literally every generation has done about younger generations throughout all of humankind, they're dismayed by the state of young people. I am. Encouraged by the state of young people. I am fascinated by what they can do and what they can accomplish and the way that they think about things. And I'm also not unrealistic, right? Kids are kids, they're learning things. They're growing things. They are trying to figure things out, and they learn by making mistakes. Some of them are terrible mistakes and they have to learn from that too. So you have to give. A lot of credit to young people these days. They're entering a world or they're growing up in a world that is different than other times and other, things that have come before them. And we. Like to criticize them for struggling with things that we, ourselves as adults are struggling with. Like how to appropriately use social media or how to, employ or keep abreast of technology as it is changing quickly. They are struggling with that. They're figuring it out because they are amazing. [00:35:07] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: A hundred percent. And I can't, I'm sorry. Keep going on. I don't wanna lose out and forget about all the great educators that we had on our show. Too many to name in this thing 'cause we wanna wrap it up. But a lot of the educators on our show, what we've been learning from them, again, if you can go watch a teacher teach, even if they're a math teacher, a history teacher, whatever, a French Spanish teacher, you learn best. From the people that you work with all the time. And then the people that have come onto our show to share what they do in the classroom, has been phenomenal and we have learned a lot from them. So if you are thinking about doing a podcast, go talk and interview some of your educators in the classroom because they're a great start. [00:35:56] Sean: I agree with that. That's a, a really good point, that we can't lose sight of, is that there haven't been any bad guests on the show. 120 plus episodes in every guest has brought something really unique and interesting and meaningful to the show, and that to me has been really the best part about doing the podcast is getting to meet all these people doing interesting, fascinating, wonderful things. We've gotten the chance to meet and see what they're doing and hear from them directly from their own lips. It's been a really great experience for that reason. And you're right, it's really the heartbeat of the show. It makes the show come alive when we have guests that are talking about all the things that they do in the classroom. [00:36:41] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: A hundred percent. Well, Sean, it's 43 and this is supposed to be like a 30 minute Wednesday insight, [00:36:49] Sean: I don't know, for five years. I think we can give ourselves like a few extra minutes, but , I'm. Looking back on the last five years, it makes me excited for the next five and the five beyond that. And it makes me, really motivated to go finish my post-production editing on the last episode so we can get that published too. Thank you for spending the time, with me today to mark the moment and recognize this. [00:37:13] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Equally. And, just to reminisce about the challenges and to keep us motivated, metacognition and reflective learning is what we. Are all about Elise. I know I am. And I rubbed it off on, Sean there that thinking about thinking and learning from our mistakes and our wins has really helped us grow, , as educators and coders [00:37:35] Sean: You just keep going. Actually I forgot to mention this. I'm wearing one of our mistakes right now. This is when we thought we were going to be doing merchandise as a way to make money. So I have a coder that teaches hoodie here. It is in fact one of a. Kind because no one else bought one. [00:37:50] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: But it was my, it's my favorite shirt. I mean, the hoodie's great. I never bought the hoodie, but I have the shirt. [00:37:55] Sean: I do have to say though, I think the hoodie was a mistake. I don't think you can wear a hoodie in Florida except for maybe a couple weeks out of the year, so, [00:38:03] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: No, not at all. Not at all. But we live and learn. [00:38:06] Sean: exactly. So learn from our mistakes. Merchandising, eh, probably not. But there are other ways to keep your podcast going. All right, Kelly. Thank you for five years. Let's go do the next five. [00:38:20] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: Thank you. [00:38:21] Sean: All right, so for teaching Python, this is Sean. [00:38:24] Kelly Schuster-Paredes: and this is Kelly signing off.