Sean Tibor:
Hello, and welcome to teaching Python. This is episode 119, and today we're going to be talking about the practice of of coding and constructivism. My name is Sean Tibor. I'm a coder who teaches and my.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Name is Kelly Schuster Paredes, and I'm a teacher that codes, and I'm wearing our shirt tonight.

Sean Tibor:
I love that. That's so great. I need to get my hoodie out. It's almost hoodie weather here in Florida. We're on the verge.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
What are you talking about? It was cold one day. It's back to 90 degrees again.

Sean Tibor:
It's cold in the morning. That's all I need.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Yeah, we digress. I have 15 minutes and I can't keep down to 15 minutes. You did such a great job last week. And am I off?

Sean Tibor:
Well, let's jump right in. So we're continuing our series here of short bites every Wednesday, something that's a little bit easier to digest, easy to listen to, and we're focusing on one topic, so no wins of the week. This week, we're just going to jump right into Kelly's topic. It's your turn this week we're going to trade off and let you run with it. So let her rip. Let's go.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Let her rip. So two days left of the quarter, and you know that we always get reflective. And even though Sean's not working in the classroom with me, he still has to hear all my pains and joys every time we meet and we catch up. And it's always a practice of ours to reflect on things that we've done and how we can change it. 6th grade is always the hardest thing to change because it's almost perfect in my mind. Once you say it's almost perfect, you know it needs to be changed eventually, and I'm working on that. But most of the 6th graders come into the class with zero knowledge of Python, zero knowledge of editors, zero knowledge of even understanding that they're going to script some language. But after that nine weeks, I'm always super amazed on how much appreciation they have for code, how much joy they have in showing their code. And it made me think about what makes this different than how I've seen other videos or teachers or other computer science teachers teach that age group. Not saying that mine is better, but I am biased to myself.

Sean Tibor:
Yours is better is what you're saying. Okay, let's dig in. Why is it better? Kelly, what works about this?

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
So I really like cognitive science and learning theories, and I always like to think back on what is it really that I'm doing? And it's a flip flop between this constructivist approach and active learning. And I always think back in my mind to Barbara Oakley's episode where she says there's nothing wrong with direct learning. 100%. I agree with her. I do a lot of direct teaching, but active learning and constructivism is pretty much at the heart of the classroom. And it was even that way when I think about how you used to teach, the kids are always coding. Right.

Sean Tibor:
So do a little definition for me. Right?

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
I am.

Sean Tibor:
What do you mean when you say constructivist? Right. What do you mean when you say active learning versus direct instruction? Like what are those three things? How are you defining them?

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Okay, so the constructivism or this constructivist approach is where the kids are actually constructing their own knowledge based on what they have acquired so far. So they're the ones pretty much breaking the computers, trying to do things that don't really maybe not work the right way or they're not the way that a computer scientist might have it. It's a lot of spaghetti code. They are building a way of just getting their ideas on paper. The active learning approach goes into the fact that learners are always actively doing something. They're not listening just to information. They're not sitting and watching PowerPoints. They're not watching a teacher code. They are taking an active part in how they learn, what they learn, and the outcome of what they learn. Does that make sense?

Sean Tibor:
Yes. I like that. And then direct instruction is where you're like the sage on the stage. Let me teach you this concept. I'm going to tell you how it is. I'm going to do my best teaching things. Right. But the student is receiving the information and integrating that into what they already know. Right?

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
100%. Thank you for clarifying. So no one size of theory fits all education. Right? You have to have a combination. We all agree on that. Most teachers believe, regardless of the fact of learning styles, that used to be a thing. We know that kids prefer learning certain ways. Not all kids learn the same way. So you have to kind of mix it up. So I'm just putting that little caveat there that I don't sit there and do the entire classes and just say go code.

Sean Tibor:
And I think the other thing you brought up here and I was going to mention this was there's also the types of learning that students like to learn. Right? And there's also the types of learning that's effective and they're not always the same thing. Like, I like to learn by sitting on the beach and writing code and drinking my ties. But that may not be the most effective that may not be the most effective way of learning. Right.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
I write the most code when I'm drinking my ties on a beach.

Sean Tibor:
There you go. But I think you're drawing a nice distinction there between there are things that we know are effective in terms of the way students sean the most and learn the best and the deepest knowledge. And then there's the ways they also like to learn, which may not be the same thing.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Exactly. For example, another example on that is Johnny may always want to work with Sam because Sam's his best friend. Him and sam think alike. They both like the same things. They both enjoy the same way to learn. But working with Sam and Johnny together is probably not the best for them because they're not interchanging or exchanging different ideas. They're not learning things that are different. They're always learning what they've always learned together, and therefore, they might not be constructing new knowledge. And in the constructivist approach, you want to be able to construct new knowledge on your own. So you sometimes need to work with different people. You need to work with different means or modes. So having laid that foundation of what constructivism, I picked four, and there's tons of principles within constructivism. I'm hoping to get through them in ten minutes. We'll see. So the first and foremost that I just talked about was active learning. And this is where kids are actively constructing their knowledge. They're hands on coding. They're the most engaged. It's, to me, the most important part of the coding process. It's the act of touching the keys, writing the print statements 20 times, doing the input statements, making a variable assigned to an object. It's writing those horribly spaghetti code conditional statements where it's like, if nested, nested, nested, nested, nested, nested, if it's red, if it's blue, if it's green, if it's yellow. Even though it's supposed to be in a list, even though you're supposed to do it a simpler way. It's just getting them to write it out. It's really helping them to get a deeper understanding of those simple concepts that we take for granted. And it's helping them to do this. Critical thinking skills. How do I make something happen when I only know, like, ten vocabulary or concepts in Python and they make it happen? So I think about this scenario just today with this kid who came to see me, and he's wanting to build a turtle picture where the user has to choose the color that they want for the triangle to build. And he came to me with, like, 150 lines of code. If it's equal to 30, if it's equal to 40, make it this.

Sean Tibor:
But it works, right?

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
It works. And he was so proud, and I was like, that's awesome. Now let's deeper your understanding and think about, is there a way to do this better? So although he went away, he constructed his own knowledge. There is that time where we still have to redirect. But I didn't want to redirect him at first, right? I just wanted him to get his idea out and actively construct his code. So that's number one. Number two is the real world context. And this is kind of like PBL, which is project based learning. You really want to associate things to something that applies to them, that they can relate to their real world applications. You constantly say, pick a project, kelly Pick something that you want to code or solve, and you're going to get really hooked into doing something. And it's the same way with kids. If we can connect the lessons to something that they want to do, their challenges, their likes, their passions, then it's something that they will thrive on. So, for example, in the first app that we do, the kids have to do some sort of engagement app where their user input, et cetera, et cetera. Some kids write about football stars. Some kids write about baseball. I had a kid. It was an entire golf game. It was boring as heck to me. But for him, he's like, which club do you want to use? You're going to choose this club. And great, you chose that club. It's going to swing and hit 30 yards or 300 yards or whatever it is in golf. I don't play golf. But it was something that was engaging.

Sean Tibor:
Think about that first year that we were teaching. We had those two girls in my 8th grade class that wrote that whole, like, choose your own adventure story. Like, 800 lines of code in like, 48 hours. They just went all out on it, and it was like, not the best written code, but honestly, it's still one of my favorite programs that any of the students wrote because they were so engaged in it. They loved it. It combined all of their interest in writing stories and telling stories, and they were telling it through code, so they linked it really well. And my favorite kind of coda to that story was that a year later, one of those students had moved away to Switzerland for boarding school, and she dropped me an email to say, hey, Mr. Tibor, remember me? I wrote this program, and I'm taking computer science in Switzerland now, and I had to write a program in Java. So I took that program and I added pictures to it now, and it's even better. And it just made me so happy that that was all harnessed together. Like that interest and that passion was driving their knowledge and understanding of Python and coding and being able to have this idea and make it come to life. So 100% with you on that?

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Absolutely. And sometimes as teachers, we try to set the project. We're like, oh, you're going to build this app, and you're going to build that app. The problem with that is I had the case in point just with my 8th graders. I said, oh, we're going to do it on these goals. And I said, you're doing this. Goal. He says, I don't like that goal. And I was like, well, shoot, that's the only goal we have left. You're going to take it? And he was so frustrated, he just wanted to do on Ecommerce or something. And in the end, I was like, okay, two people do it on Ecommerce. Fine, whatever. Because if they're not connected to it, the code is going to be crap. They're going to do it just to do it in the grade and what's the point of grading something that's just for a know, let's get them. So, number three, sorry. Collaboration. Collaboration is key. You talk about how you work together with your team at Mondelez, and it is a social activity. Learning is a social activity. Coding is a social activity. Working with other people, unfortunately, has to be a social activity. I can't go into my room and sit alone, although I do it a lot. It's just this social emotional learning skill that happens. And going back to I think I said Sammy and Johnny. If Sammy and Johnny are best friends working together super easy, they can goof off and have fun and they probably will get some work done. However, if we have two kids of opposite likes or opposite knowledge base, when you pair them together and you force them to choose different people you're emphasizing that real deep peer programming where John may know know functions, where kelly only knows about list, and we can share our knowledge and construct our knowledge together. Hitting on each part that's lacking and that sitting alongside and stealing ideas and peer programming really just helps to strengthen that learning experience. Other people.

Sean Tibor:
That's how we discovered generators.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Is that how it happened?

Sean Tibor:
Lists and functions together. It was great.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
I didn't even think about that. See, I have one more to go and this one's a huge one. It's for me and I think for you, motivation is what drives learning. Motivation is what got me into coding and it is what motivated me to actually start learning. But at the same time, I needed to overcome challenges and know how to do it so that constructivist person is motivated to learn. It's an active learning process, but they also are motivated to overcome those challenges and just drive through whatever's holding them back. One of the key things in our classroom, and it was even before Sean left, were all these motivational stickers all over the wall, and now they're even more. It's like I just keep sticking more mindset is everything. So letting the kids know that frustration is normal. Sometimes I tell the story of how I bang on my computer or bang on the desk. Sean used to laugh at me all the time. But you have to teach them that there are methods for calming stress, like allowing them freedom to peace out. We say in our classroom, show me the peace sign. Go. That means you're going to the bathroom. Allowing them to sit in different positions, locations, get up and move. One student, actually today can you put on that weird music, ms. Paredes, that you put on? It's like some calming birdie sounds. And just letting them know that when they're stressed, when they're not focused, there are things that they can do. Let me think. What else?

Sean Tibor:
I think you've actually achieved a level of self awareness in this also, and this is something we want the students to know too, is that once you really understand the sources of your own motivation, you end up hacking yourself on that, right? So you hack your own motivations to make it worse. I have seen you because I know you're motivated by this desire to show people that you can do something right. They think, I can't do this, so I'm going to do this. I've seen you literally invent conflict in order to drive yourself further and your own learning where no conflict exists, and you would never let the other person know that this is all in your head. It's not anything that is actually related to that other person. But you've learned how to hack your own motivation and drive your learning as a result of understanding what truly creates that motivation and enthusiasm and passion for learning for yourself. So for students in this age group, in that kind of middle school range, we're just trying to create the external source of motivation for them, discover what really motivates them, and then help them help create that for them. But then as an adult and an adult learner, you kind of get to the point of self realization and self awareness where you understand what motivates you and how to create that motivation for yourself so that you can drive yourself further. And to me, it was always fascinating to see that happen. Like, I've seen it, you know, Kelly's not actually in competition with that person. She's using this to fuel her own learning. And that's kind of an amazing and.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
That'S what that's all that anyone needs. And every time that we meet somebody and they tell us our story, you see that same sort of whatever driving force that got them into coding. And it's just really interesting. So to sum everything up, because I did not do as well as you, I'm like, three minutes over, stressing me out, motivated.

Sean Tibor:
I interrupted you a lot.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
So constructivism, it's super valuable, in my opinion. There is a lot of people that disagree with it. Obviously, we don't want a physicist to go and go, hey, construct your own knowledge. Go figure out why gravity exists when someone already knows that gravity exists. It might take too long. However, it does allow them to see new concepts and new aspects and new creative moments. It's not easy. Takes a lot of teacher investment. People think that, oh, that's easy. You're just going to let them go. Code? No. There's actually a lot of planning going on, and it's really difficult to not take the computer away from a student and start typing the code for them and showing this is how you do it. To allow that true constructivism is to keep asking the kids questions. And I learned this a lot from you. Like, what do you think? And that's my favorite. What do you think? Letting them kind of develop their thought process with it. Yeah. And that's it. That's where I'm at. I think I finished did it all.

Sean Tibor:
I think it's a good way of kind of summarizing, and I think the part that you've done really well in constructing this is kind of like creating the playground, the mental playground of where kids can go, where learners can go to do this constructivist work, right? So when we take kindergarten students to a playground, we don't tell them, you can run anywhere you want. You can say, you can play anywhere you want on this playground, right? And within the construct of that playground, the boundaries that we create for them, they're able to do some pretty amazing creative things. Those constraints or the boundaries that we put on them help focus and channel their efforts into productive, appropriate learning opportunities and play opportunities. And there's no reason why that doesn't work in a middle school context. Upper school, college, adult learning. Create the playground for people, right? And say, now go play. Go learn. Go motivate yourself. Go construct that knowledge within the bounds of what we created here. And there's a lot that you can do within those boundaries.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
100%. Thank you for summarizing. That was perfect. And now that I have my wonderful student who is creating this amazing stuff today, he was talking to me. He came in, and I was sitting there, and I was getting really sad. He's like, what's wrong? And I was like, I have to start back at two plus two on Monday. And he looked at me, he's like, oh. So that's what we do. And I will see them again in.

Sean Tibor:
7Th grade, and we'll start constructing all over again.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Constructing all over again.

Sean Tibor:
All right, well, thank you. Thank you, Kelly, for sharing that with me. It helped clarify a lot of things for me, which is really helpful because I'm putting together a week long training program for work in a few weeks, and this is helping me think about how I want to structure that and what playground I want to create. So this is very timely and appropriate for me as well. So thank you for sharing this with me and with our audience.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Anytime you're going to do amazing.

Sean Tibor:
It'll be fun. It'll be fun. So we'll keep it short. Here another great kind of bite sized bit of information from Kelly. This is one of the things I appreciate about working with you and continue to enjoy about doing the podcast with you is I always learn something new. So thank you for sharing, and thank you for getting me excited about it. I'm ready to go do this boot camp now, and I'm looking forward to it.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Awesome. Thank you for being you, too. So sign us off.

Sean Tibor:
All right, so, for teaching Python, this.

Kelly Schuster Paredes:
Is Sean, and this is Kelly signing up our channel.