Episode 23: Being Reflective
Sean Tibor: [00:00:00] Hello and Welcome to Teaching Python. This is Episode 23: Being 
Reflective, A Year of Learning, Teaching and Python. My name is Sean Tibor. I'm a coder who 
recently began teaching. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:00:29] My name is Kelly Schuster-Paredes, and I'm a teacher who recently 
began to code. 
Sean Tibor: [00:00:34] I think we should probably think about changing our introduction 
because it's been a full year now for both of us have learning how to teach and learning how 
to python.
Kelly Paredes: [00:00:41] I don't know as a marketer isn't that called like rebranding? How 
do we do that? 
Sean Tibor: [00:00:45] Maybe a pivot? Maybe it's like a gentle shift in Direction. But you 
know, I have to say at least watching you code now. You're no longer a beginner. You're 
really moving more into that intermediate territory where you're starting to know things and 
recognize patterns and everything.
So, I don't know if you're you'll always be learning how to code but I don't know that it's so 
recent anymore. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:01:06] I know it seems  like such a long time ago that I started coding and 
going through a couple of courses right now, and I'm starting to feel confident as I go along 
and I yeah, it's quite fun.
But and you look at you your last official day of your first year of teaching 
Sean Tibor: [00:01:25] I made it you made it didn't get fired. They say they want me back 
next year.
Kelly Paredes: [00:01:32] It's always a great thing and then you can think about what you did 
and what you want to do better and I think that's the whole point of our our session today 
our episode.
Sean Tibor: [00:01:41] Yeah. I think it works really well in both disciplines whether it's 
teaching or coding. Being reflective is important reflecting on your progress reflecting on 
your learning. Obviously, it goes beyond that as well right reflecting on your life from time to 
time and and your development taking stock of where you are as important.
And I think that this is a natural point to do it at the end of our first year teaching and coding 
so I'm excited about this episode because it is a good thing to be reflective upon. 
Wins of the Week [00:02:10]
But I also wanted to talk about the Wins of the Week, you know, make sure that we  always 
get those in because we've had many people tell us as one of their favorite parts of our 
episode and to be honest. It's one of my favorite things about teaching is celebrating the 
victories with our students and for our students that really helped with their feeling of 
accomplishment and success and really sets them up for further learning and growth.
Kelly Paredes: [00:02:32] Absolutely. Well, I'm going to start and I'm going to be a little bit 
selfish this week. And since we are talking about learning and the fact that I have been a 
student learning python for a year now, I am going to say my big one of the week is that I am 
a quarter way through my udemy course with Colt Steele the modern Python 3 bootcamp 
and I'm flying through it to be honest.
I just started a couple days ago. And the first part first quarter of the course is all a refresher 
course just a few little things that I'm picking up that I was like, oh that makes sense now 
and that was golden 
Sean Tibor: [00:03:07] feels good to know things, right? That's really great. You know for me, 
it was a lot of fun in the end of this year was all projects in the projects part of my course is 
my favorite thing is the favorite time because I get to ride that balance of helping them and 
helping them by not helping them right time to go figure it out or that sounds great.
Why don't you go give it a try without giving them the answer and it's really amazing to go 
see what they do and I think. There were a couple favorite projects this year. But one of the 
things I thought was really a sign of true engagement and learning was that I had finished 
the grading of all the projects everyone had demonstrated what they were working on last 
Friday.
And then we had a few extra days in class. We're wrapping things up and cleaning up and 
there was less structured time for the students and two of my students kept working on 
their project because they really wanted to make it work and they really wanted to finish. 
And they were making some light-up shoes.
And so they were gluing strips and doing more coding and programming on it just because 
they wanted to because they wanted to see it finished and see it through and that to me 
was a sign that they had chosen a good project and that they were excited about it. And I 
really saw some deeper learning happening with that project.
They were just wouldn't give up on it and it was a really cool thing to see and it was a great 
way to cap off the Year by seeing students that were deeply engaged in. Buy something that 
they themselves had Chosen and really engaged into. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:04:37] Yeah. It's a great to see that I'm excited to see what happens next 
year with all these kids and all their projects and and what they what they accomplished.
Sean Tibor: [00:04:45] So let's reflect more right like that. I think that's a good place to dive 
in. You know, I think you pulled a great quote about learning and reflection. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:04:56] Yes. Yes. Confucius says learning without reflection is a waste. 
Reflection without learning is dangerous. 
Sean Tibor: [00:05:04] So I hope that's actually a Confucius quote not just like a fortune 
cookie.
Kelly Paredes: [00:05:07] I really did said it. I had didn't verify only did one source. So if 
someone fixed will double check that before The Showdown, 
Sean Tibor: [00:05:14] You know, the fastest way to get the right answer on the internet. 
This gives something out that's dubious or the wrong answer you and 
Kelly Paredes: [00:05:20] I'm checking it right now just to verify and and I think what 
Sean Tibor: [00:05:25] no matter the source whether it's apocryphal or whether it's actually 
a Confucian quote.
It's true that if we don't reflect on our learning as wasteful and if we learn, you know, if we 
reflect without actually learning from it, and we don't really grow it's a dangerous place to 
be so I think it's a perfect lead-in to our reflection here the research really supports this, 
right? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:05:48] Yeah, and I think this year we both were big we were Learners and 
I think we have to be true to ourselves and true to our students when we asked them to be.
Reflective and think about their learning or learn from their learning that we also do the 
same. We both had some huge learning opportunities this year with me learning Python and 
with you learning the ins and out of teaching and the pedagogy behind making a unit or 
making an activity and it's really important just to take that time.
And and think about our learning process and our current practices and what we are going 
to do in order to make ourselves be better and to continue to learn next year. 
Sean Tibor: [00:06:35] I agree and one things that I've tried to preserve over the course of 
my career or something that's been a difficult lesson at times is the importance of keeping 
your reflection balanced and fair, so it's easy to be very negative.
And critical and say well this didn't work and this didn't work and this didn't work and this 
didn't work. Sometimes that can be overly detrimental. There's a difference between 
constructive criticism and just criticism especially of yourself. So I found it's important that 
whenever I recognize that my reflection is getting to be overly negative to take a step back 
and look at what did work or bring some balance?
Into it with some of the positive aspects of what I learned in sometimes it's I learned 999 
ways not to make a lightbulb. It's all about how you view it. So, you know, the opposite is 
also a problem to if you've ever been in a meeting where everyone says that everything's 
amazing and that there's no room for improvement and it was just perfect the way it was.
It's probably a sign that things aren't as good as they appear or that people are 
whitewashing or painting over some of the blemishes in what? And so I think it's always 
important to take that moment to check in on your own reflection to to say am I being 
honest and fair with my assessment of what happened 
Kelly Paredes: [00:07:52] and I think that Rings true for both of us. We both received our 
evaluations that and although we have a good evaluation about pedagogy and teaching is all 
Sean Tibor: [00:08:02] specifically we're talking about being observed in the classroom in a 
teaching setting working with students by our administration's we have a third party. 
Outside Source coming in to observe and reflect on on what we are doing in the classroom in 
our approach and style.
And this was something I was really excited to get actually so that's the evaluation we're 
talking about just in terms of outside or administrative assessment of how you're performing 
to be able to improve 
Kelly Paredes: [00:08:30] thank you. Yes this thank you for clarifying. I sometimes forget as a 
teacher use this lingo or jargon, but we both.
Ra God our evaluations back from our administrator and I think for for teaching the 
pedagogy the Styles the the way that we move throughout the classroom. That's something 
that most administrators can give quality feedback. However, when it comes to our content 
or how we teach a specific skill within computer science or python it's often difficult for 
people to evaluate that I shouldn't say like strength, but the way that we've accomplished 
that learning opportunity for the kids. 
Sean Tibor: [00:09:15] So I just heart you're saying essentially the content is harder to 
evaluate than the delivery sometimes 
Kelly Paredes: [00:09:20] exactly exactly when it comes to something new something that's 
on the cusp.
Most people in the computer science realm tend to be alone into a little island of what 
they're doing. Not many people. Technology and how it improves the learning within the 
classroom. So I think that's something that we as teachers constantly reflect on and we have 
our small group of other computer scientists that we talk to to make sure that our skills are 
being taught logically or in a logical order or that we are getting that Baseline understanding 
for the kids and just taking a step back and thinking about our curriculum and how we 
ordered and.
Things throughout the years something that is going to be really beneficial for us
Sean Tibor: [00:10:07] and the benefit of the internet now in the ability to communicate this 
easily is that if you don't have someone who's physically able to come into your classroom, 
you could record it. You can share your curriculum.
If you know, it's possible with another person have them look at it over the Internet so 
finding those colleagues in the your professional Learning Network that can help you 
construct a we assess your approach is really helpful 
Kelly Paredes: [00:10:29] and it's such a. For me, it's one of the best times. It's a really nice 
professional development moment to take a step back and to look at the Powerpoints or 
look at the lectures that I did over the quarter and how they changed from quarter 1 to 
quarter 4 and just think about why I move things around and it's just a great professional 
development to say.
Oh, I don't think I really understood that topic in Python. I need to go back and learn that 
bad.
Sean Tibor: [00:10:59] Right and conversely it's important to observe other teachers.  That 
this can help you with your own Reflections to see how other people teach so make sure 
that you're doing that and that you're engaging a variety of experts to help you with your 
teaching.
It's a great form of professional development and it lets us really analyzed to focus on what's 
working rather than what's not
Top 5 Reflective Learning Questions [00:11:20]
Kelly Paredes: [00:11:20] yeah. So we had a lot of fun on that 5 things. We are looking 
forward to at pycon. So we kind of got the idea that we were going to do a. Five questions to 
reflect upon and we're going to add a little spin to it because you are your first-year teacher 
and you are learning how to teach and because I'm a first-year coder and learning about 
python.
We are going to reflect on our own learning versus our teaching practices and we're going to 
go through our top five learning moments. 
Question 1: How did it go and how do you know? 
[00:11:52]
Sean Tibor: [00:11:52] It sounds great. All right. So our first question is really the overall 
question. How did the year ago and how do I know so Kelly you're going to focus on your 
coding learning experience and I'm going to focus on my teaching learning experience.
Kelly Paredes: [00:12:06] So, how did it go? And how do you know I love this question. I'll try 
not to say that about all of the questions because I really do like reflecting but how did it go? 
It was a very hilly run for me with python a very slow start when I started. A lot of ups and 
downs, but in the end the excitement to for being able to solve problems that students 
would come up and ask me to solve was amazing just to be able to say oh you got you all 
you forgot to do that and you didn't put a colon on there, you know, you need to call that 
variable in the beginning.
It was just being able to know where the errors were or what they wanted to do. And I think 
that's how I know that I was finally getting. To understand python. 
Sean Tibor: [00:12:59] Yeah, I noticed that the questions you would ask me change 
throughout the year. So the beginning the questions you were asking me to help you answer 
or resolve or figure out where more aligned with beginner questions the same sorts of 
things I was getting from my students, but then as the year progressed and as your 
knowledge progress what I saw was that you are getting fewer questions about Cindy. Or 
about common errors you were getting into more of the questions about how do I structure 
this or how do I think through this or what's a better way to write this or even what is this 
object?
How does it work or how do I think about this or how do I teach this to the students that 
really signaled to me that you were progressing in your own knowledge that the basics were 
being taken care of in your recognizing those patterns and being able to solve them so that 
the more advanced topics were coming easily to the Forefront for you in terms of the 
questions you.
Kelly Paredes: [00:13:52] Okay. Yep, and that's a great feeling of just knowing that you're 
learning. So what about you?
Sean Tibor: [00:13:57] I think overall the year went. Well, I felt my confidence grow as a 
teacher throughout the year the beginning. I always tried to act confident a little bit of the 
fake it until you make it approach with the students know and really kind of maybe never 
showing them fear.
But being honest with them that I was still learning this and that we would experiment 
together in terms of the teaching Style and what was working and what did. But I think it 
went well overall. I had my share of Hills to climb and valleys as well that were things didn't 
work as well as I would have liked but the how do I know it worked is really the anecdotes.
I wouldn't necessarily say have a lot of quantitative data here. But the qualitative was really 
good. One of the things that to me, I will I treasured from this year that Roy showed that I 
was doing something right was a letter that I got from one of my students and I think I 
mentioned her. In the very early part of the Year where she said I'm not a coder and I 
challenged her on that and said how do you know and I stuck with her and I made sure that 
she kept trying and I wouldn't give up on her becoming a more proficient computer science 
person.
Right like someone who thinks programmatically through things and I got this letter from her 
and I think my favorite part said thank you for believing in me and knowing that I'm not 
stupid when I. That to me was a sign that for one student. I had made a difference for her 
when she needed it and I spoke to her again after she sent that letter and I told you that I 
expected her to keep trying and that she's not stupid whether she's trying or not and that I 
expect great things from her and I'm want her to come back and share them with me.
So I'm hoping that you know in the future she'll be able to come back and tell me more 
about what's working for and how she's growing as a person over the next four or five years. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:15:45] Yeah, that's great. And I remember in my first years one of the one 
of my mentors said to me can't save everyone but at least you can save some and I think 
that goes in line with what you're learning.
You can't get everyone to be a code or be a programmer or go into that field, but you can 
get that one that did not think they were going to love computer science to at least sit there 
and reflect on that and say yeah. It's not so bad. I think I'm going to do that 
Sean Tibor: [00:16:14] one things that I realized as a teacher and not just as a computer 
scientist.
It don't care as much about whether they love computer science or not. The more important 
thing is are they growing as a person are they developing are they finding their own 
strengths and their own areas where they can Excel and overcoming some of those 
challenges that we've all faced in our growth and development.
So if you have this particular student or any of the other. Even if they don't particularly care 
about computer science, did they have a sense of accomplishment that they have a sense of 
feeling successful and competent and capable that they can carry with them to whatever 
Pursuits our endeavors that they go after.
Question 2: What do you feel really worked? [00:16:53]
Kelly Paredes: [00:16:53] absolutely so our number two question is what do I feel really 
worked?
I'll let you start with that one. 
Sean Tibor: [00:17:03] I think the part that really worked was  finding ways to connect 
students with their passions. There was nothing more disheartening than seeing kids who 
just gave up or didn't care or they would do the bare minimum to have satisfied. Right? But 
it kind of that that signal that you're not really getting it is when you when the students is 
how much time is left in the class, right or when does this class end because they've already 
checked out there already done what really were.
It was when we hit that state of flow where kids were diving in and they were excited about 
what they were doing and they had some sense of choice that led them to deeper learning 
and more engagement and that really helped me feel like this is working like there's 
something to this because they are feeling that sense of accomplishment and enablement 
that this skill that they're learning or these techniques that they're learning are valuable for 
them and they can apply them to solve real problems.
Kelly Paredes: [00:18:02] Yeah. Again from another a conference I went to was called 
looking for Learning and coming into that classroom and seeing kids engaged. It's not it's not 
a quiet feeling it could be but there is a buzz. There's a buzz that that exists when those kids 
get into a float when they're working. They may be laying on the floor.
They may be intensely looking at their computer or searching in. But there's this electrical 
kind of feeling that goes on and you know, you've got this success happening when they hit 
that state of flow. 
Sean Tibor: [00:18:35] Yeah, I agree and it for you with the coding side. Did you ever 
experience one of those moments where it really clicked and you were like just firing on all 
cylinders with your python.
Kelly Paredes: [00:18:45] So it's really funny. I've tried a lot of different learning methods 
throughout the year. And the thing that I feel really worked for me is when you introduced 
me to the collaboratory notebooks from jupyter notebook and for me when I write code 
there and I can write notes in my own words and the text editor that has really helped me to 
solidify my knowledge of coding.
It's not that I go back and look at these notebooks all the time. But the point of having to 
write it out and write the code while I'm either doing a course or working through a book. It 
has really helped me. I did that for the automate the boring stuff and just to be able to go 
back and click on some of those exercises.
It's just it's a great feeling. I know it worked. I know it's stuck in my head and it worked a lot 
better than the the handwritten Note book which I was surprised about because I tried that 
in the beginning. 
Sean Tibor: [00:19:40] Yeah, I saw you really get into that and one of things I like about that 
as a teaching method is the ability to to add notes or provide richer content than just a 
comment in code.
But as a learning tool I saw that you really use that to try a piece of code. So as you're going 
through and building this cumulative set of knowledge of your Python and you're working 
through a problem or when you're working through a program and building it out. The nice 
thing about the jupyter notebook is you can run one block of code over and over and over 
again.
And as long as you don't destroy the data state that you already have in the computer, you 
can run that piece over and over again until you get it right without having to go back and 
run the whole thing. And so it really helps you chunk your learning into smaller pieces and 
focus on that and I saw you really kind of grab onto that and use it as a principal learning 
tool.
Kelly Paredes: [00:20:33] Yes, and I also did jupyter notebook and pycon with folium and I 
started working through that that's a project that I want to finish I started and I think I 
posted it in my first was it repository? What is it? 
Sean Tibor: [00:20:46] Pull request? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:20:47] No, it wasn't a pull request. It was like a note other side what you'll 
have 
Sean Tibor: [00:20:51] an issue? 
Kelly Paredes: [00:20:51] An issue.
Yes. I did write my first issue at pycon. So that was very exciting and it was a jupyter 
notebook or collab know. 
Question 3: What's one thing you weren't able to do 
but weren't able to? [00:20:58]
Sean Tibor: [00:20:58] Nice. Well, what's one thing you wanted to do, but you weren't able 
to do it for whatever reason. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:21:04] Well, the one thing that I wanted to do, I got a little bit excited at 
the very beginning of my year and I enrolled in a data science udemy course, but about 
three sections into the course.
I realized it was way over my head. And as much as it was very I love data. I love graphs. I 
love everything that happens with data science, but the python was a little bit out of my 
reach. So that's one thing that I want to do. Next year is go back and take that course that 
they keep reminding me that I didn't finish 
Sean Tibor: [00:21:43] well for me one thing that I wanted to do in the classroom that I 
never really got to was to include more data literacy. And show students how to bring data 
in from other sources and do some analysis on it. We just got to the point with a few 
students by the end of the quarter where they could load a CSV file and start to process it to 
do things.
So I'm looking forward to that next year as we build on our first year of teaching python in 
our middle school and as I'm teaching students that have some background and experience. 
I'm looking to be able to specialize. We're focused on a few topic areas throughout the 
wheel including data science and Robotics and artificial intelligence and some of these areas 
that with the right approach and the right leveling of the content that they'll be able to do 
some pretty amazing things with the basic python skills that they've acquired this year.
So that's something that is I've pushed to next year when they're more ready and when I'm 
more. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:22:44] And I think that's one of these things that's going to we're 
probably going to see in our field of edgy and education this idea of digital literacy this 
understanding about being a cyber citizen the the data that's coming in and how that plays 
as a programmer as a coder or just behind the scenes and I think that's going to be a very big 
turn of events for educators around the world about that digital literacy and the data, so 
whatever we can do to help teach the kids that I think it's going to be beneficial.
Sean Tibor: [00:23:15] I agree and there's certainly going to be some teachers teaching 
teachers without one where we're going to work with our colleagues to help them Infuse 
more of that into their classrooms and for their own knowledge as well. 
Question 4: What's one thing I should not have done? 
[00:23:26]
Kelly Paredes: [00:23:26] So one thing that I should not have done in a lesson.
Sean Tibor: [00:23:30] Oh, I this one's easy for me because this is when I should have known 
better about and you know after the fact I recognized that we were talking about Robotics 
and we were talking about. Solving problems and Simone Gertz who is the self-proclaimed 
queen of shitty robots has a YouTube channel with all of these robots that she's created and 
submissions from other people where they're robots that do things poorly.
And so one example is it's a robot that feeds you cereal but it ends up getting like milk and 
cereal everywhere. It's like tries to pour the milk, but it just misses everything and milk 
splashes everywhere and other than the name, which should have been my first indicator 
that it was not the right channel to use as soon as I turned on her first video. She has her 
theme music and it's wildly inappropriate for a school setting and then to shut it off 
immediately and everybody in the class kind of went. Whoa, and I said, yeah. Well, oh for 
sure that was not okay, and I apologize. I should have screen that beforehand.
That was my mistake. And so it was something that seems very obvious in retrospect. But it 
was a great reminder to always pre-screen your YouTube videos before you show them in 
class.
Kelly Paredes: [00:24:39] There's a great lesson for a teacher for any teacher and I think 
we've all been there when that either add or something has shown up on YouTube.
So that's a great lesson for all new teachers. So one thing that I should not have done and 
I'm kind of slipping into this teaching phase but it's because I was learning and teaching 
python at the same time, but it was the sensor. For me I try to introduce sensors thinking my 
knowledge of sensors with EV3 was going to help me understand sensors working on a micro 
bit and working on a circuit playground and I think I was very naive and yes, everything has 
inputs everything has outputs, but being able to connect sensors use them with without I 
was trying to do it without a breadboard.
I don't even know what I was thinking. So I think whenever you are whenever you are 
learning the language, you need to try to focus in on a certain aspect and not try to pull in 
from all the great libraries that that python has because as much as you think you might 
know something yeah it work for me.
Sean Tibor: [00:25:55] Yeah, I think but I think that that's something that will grow over time 
sensors are something that can be tricky but  thanks to the hard work of a lot of people that 
are bringing more sensors to beginners. There's a lot of things that we can do with sensors 
out that just weren't possible years and years ago and even a lot of the digital standards for 
reading sensor values in the libraries have been created it made it easier.
So I'm hopeful as well that as we go forward you and your knowledge will grow and you'll be 
able to use these more adeptly in a lesson. And the students really get a lot out of that 
because it really does connect it to the physical world that they're a part of. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:26:33] Yeah, and I think just the whole electrical component was 
something new to me too.
So that was overlooked as a biologist. I only know the body's systems. 
Sean Tibor: [00:26:45] Oh sure. Electric Eels Like this? Think of electric eels. You'll be fine. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:26:49] Don't put your hand in the socket. All right, so last question. 
Question 5: What are 3 things you will do differently 
next year? [00:26:54]
Sean Tibor: [00:26:54] So three things based on these Reflections that I will do differently 
next year. You want to go sure.
Okay. So three things I will do differently one. I will always pre-screen my YouTube videos to 
I'm working on more of the fundamentals and just the logistics of teaching. It's the basics 
that need to happen. It's all the boring stuff that needs to be automated but it needs to 
happen. So one of the things that I think will help me overtime is just focusing on getting a 
lot of the fundamentals of grading in place attendance clear communicating clear 
expectations finding ways to make students more aware of how they're performing and how 
they're progressing in class.
And I think that that will help me overall manage the workload better because one of my 
goals next year is to get more sleep along the way. And then and then the third thing that I 
will do differently is I'm going to add more Focus areas of content. Now that we have 
established the basics with our students.
There's still going to be some review and some building on python Basics. Like we still have 
some data structures that we haven't really talked about yet. We do a little bit with lists and 
tuples and everything, but it's been a little bit more time with that and do it in the context of 
data analysis or graphing or something.
Give them some skills that they can use especially as my eighth graders are preparing for 
upper school. And then College where they have these fundamental analysis and data 
processing skills that they can use. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:28:28] I think those are big things for you to look forward to but I know 
you'll be successful in those and I think that will really benefit the learning for the students.
It will be interesting as we shift in our our curriculum next year and I moved to sixth grade. 
And we work together and plan seventh grade. I think we'll have some some opportunities 
to really push some of those goals. Yep. Great. So the three things that I will do differently 
next year as I continue to Learn Python.
Well number one definitely is complete any course that I start because currently I have two 
courses that I am taking simultaneously for some reason and I want to make sure that I 
finished those fully and get my certificate and close that chapter. The other thing that I want 
to work on is web scraping.
It's something that I really think will be interesting and I want to you know check and I've 
learned that. And then lastly and hesitantly, I want to do more with electrical circuits and 
kind of sensors bread boarding. It's not one of the things I really like to do, but we know and 
seeing that the kids really like that aspect.
They love soldering they love bread boarding. They love prototyping and as much as I like 
looking at my screen, they like shaking a you know on a circuit playground and watching it 
change. So those are the three things that I am going to do differently. I'm going to focus on 
on learning different things that I don't really like to do and not just focus on the stuff.
Wish List [00:30:11]
Sean Tibor: [00:30:11] Well one thing that I have on my wish list for next year that ties into 
that last Point around physical Computing and circuits and electronics like one of my things I 
would love to do next year or the year after whenever it's an opportunity is I would love to 
take a field trip to go visit Adafruit or SparkFun and just see all the different things that 
they're doing and how they work on projects and the the new and exciting things that 
they're bringing our way when it comes to things like CircuitPython and all the boards and 
sensors and everything that are out there. It was such a great pleasure to meet all of the 
Adafruit team at PyCon this past year and I would love to go see where they get to work and 
play on a regular basis.
I think that would be so much fun, and I would love to do that. So I'm looking forward to 
making more connections like we did at pycon and finding more opportunities to grow and I 
think that that will help bring some of the excitement and enthusiasm for what you're trying 
to do with the students, especially around physical computing and electronics and circuits 
because it's it is contagious and it's fun and exciting when you can make things light up and 
move and sense the world around you and things like that.
Kelly Paredes: [00:31:18] So yeah, I'm slowly getting a passion we have ever I have a Trinket 
in my backpack a gemma. Mo in my backpack we have this what else do I have? Oh I of 
course have a circuit playground and a cricket that we're going to be exploring a little bit like 
Sean Tibor: [00:31:36] we've at this point have nearly every eighth circuit python board that 
Adafruit offers, although I'm trying to get all the rest like round out the collection but the 
cool and exciting thing coming out of pycon in this seemingly renewed focus on python 
hardware.
Is that it's not just Adafruit making the boards now, there's lots of other really cool Boards 
out there that are coming out for microPython and CircuitPython that are unique and 
different and really give students and teachers a lot of things to play with. So we're going to 
keep our eyes out for what's next.
And what's coming. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:32:10] Do you want to hear my wish? 
Sean Tibor: [00:32:11] What's your wish for next year?
Kelly Paredes: [00:32:13] My wish is that they have a tiny micro processing board that's 
relatively cheap under five dollars with. You know battery pack included where we can just 
give to the kids and say okay here. This will light up a one LED or two LEDs and you can take 
this home.
And so it's just like a tiny tiny package of you know, cost-efficient little micro controller. 
Sean Tibor: [00:32:38] Yeah. I think we're close with things like the drink it the trinket looks 
like it could be really good. I think it retails for 8.95 very dollars or less $15 right? We're close 
were close.
Yeah, so I think we're I think we're getting close and there's a lot of things that are possible 
especially as we start to simplify. But the goal would be for next year to have some really 
great new opportunities for our students when it comes to making their projects and bring 
their ideas to life.
Kelly Paredes: [00:33:04] Absolutely. Well, we wanted to keep this short. This is the last day 
of the year and we will be continuing to to record during the summer because we do have 
summer. 
Preview of Teaching Python for the Summer [00:33:15]
Sean Tibor: [00:33:15] Yeah, so what's just take one minute to preview what's coming over 
the summer and what we have in mind for teaching python over the summer.
So we all are both teaching summer stem camp and the nice thing about this for Kelly and I 
is that we teach much younger students. So it's a good chance for us to work on unplugged 
activities and work on algorithmic thinking and computational design with younger students 
as they're in their more formative years for Thought processes and.
So we're going to be doing a little bit more scratch and some things with basic circuits and 
robot navigation and everything. So we'll be doing that this summer. We're also getting 
some time off and I know that I have a stack of projects in books that I want to go through 
over the summer, but we're going to keep recording teaching python episodes.
We're going to keep will probably shift to more of a conference call format. We've got some 
guests that were working on to bring in over the summer so in 
Kelly Paredes: [00:34:10] we're also on brown bag. 
Sean Tibor: [00:34:13] Yes a lot in July. We are going to be guests on the V Brown Bag 
podcast, which is actually it's a webinar. So we're going to be on screen with something as 
well.
We have to put together slides. We're going to be talking about effective methods for 
teaching and learning Python. And our goal is is really to help those people that are at 
companies or corporations or maybe working in a data center or in developer operations or 
something like that where they are.
Maybe learning Python and finding it really valuable to their job and want to teach it to 
others. So, how can we help equip them with some basic tools that they can use to grow 
adoption of python within their companies or within their organizations. 
Kelly Paredes: [00:34:50] Yes, and on top of summer summer camp. I'm actually going to be 
BIE Institute in California Buck Institute and doing a district level course on Project based 
learning and I'm hoping to bring that back in of how can we have a authentic audiences with 
computer science and and really just to develop better products with maybe our 20% time 
and look at that. So that's going to be fun. We also have our signature camp where we'll be 
doing wearable technology.
Sean Tibor: [00:35:22] So we were selling entrepreneurial entrepreneurships, right? So make 
it and sell it.
Kelly Paredes: [00:35:26] It's going to be a great busy here next thing, you know, we'll be 
back at it.
Sean Tibor: [00:35:31] Well, and I have for my conference schedule. If anybody out there is 
going to use the side Pi conference in Austin Texas the week after the Fourth of July.
I think it's like July 7th or 8th through the 12th. I'll be at that trying to keep up with all the 
scientists out there and learn about how we can bring some of that back to the classroom. 
For both our middle school and our upper school. I think there's a lot of great interactions 
and connections between the hard science or traditional science area and computer science.
So I'm looking to bring some of that back if you're planning to attend that conference reach 
out to me on Twitter. We're looking forward to the different conferences. We're going to 
this year, but we really look forward to meeting new people and making connections that 
can grow everyone 
Contact Us [00:36:14]
Kelly Paredes: [00:36:14] and if you have any suggestions on how we should introduce 
ourselves, Next year since we won't be new teachers and new coders relatively new 
teachers and relatively new coders.
Go ahead and send us a message or tweet to us at teaching python. 
Sean Tibor: [00:36:31] That's right. And if you want to support us, we have a patreon now so 
you can support us with a few bucks here there. It really helps us out with defraying hosting 
costs and transcription and things like that. So the efforts that we invest into making it easy 
for you to get our.
If you can help us out on patreon, it really goes a long way our website for that as 
patreon.com teaching python, which surprisingly enough that web address was available 
when I looked for it.
Kelly Paredes: [00:36:57] It's so lucky. 
Sean Tibor: [00:36:59] Alright, well, we'll sign off and get on with our summer for teaching 
python. This is Sean and this is Kelly signing off.