October 6, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com • 9A
Students get with the ‘program’
By R.J. Marx
Cannon Beach Gazette
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Seaside campus preliminary plan.
Campus relocation
project rolls ahead
Final reading
ahead before
adoption
By R.J. Marx
Cannon Beach Gazette
The Seaside District’s
drive to bring a new campus
to the Southeast Hills rolled
along as City Councilors gave
the nod to code changes nec-
essary for construction. On
Monday, Sept. 25, the city
presented the ordinances nec-
essary to complete the com-
prehensive plan amendment,
which would move three
endangered schools to high-
er ground out of the tsunami
zone.
Relocation of Seaside High
School, Gearhart Elementary
School and Broadway Middle
School is anticipated in Sep-
tember 2020.
The ordinances are con-
sidered administrative steps
endorsing the plan, Mayor
Jay Barber said. A third read-
ing is required for adoption of
the ordinance.
About 49 acres of zoned
forest land on the 89-acre
campus, donated to the dis-
trict by Weyerhaeuser Co.,
needs to be brought into Sea-
side’s urban growth boundary
and rezoned before build-
ing can proceed. Another 40
acres, already in Seaside but
zoned low-density residential
also requires a zone change.
Both parcels will be rezoned
as institutional campus, a des-
ignation for properties more
than 20 acres intended for
large-scale uses such as hos-
pitals and school campuses.
Seaside’s John Dunzer was
a lone voice in opposition to
ordinance changes designed
to facilitate construction of
the new campus.“This urban
growth boundary expansion
— the concept is wrong,”
Dunzer said.
The council’s decision did
not meet state goals, he said.
Dunzer said the city could
find alternate sites within the
urban growth boundary that
did not require the ordinance
changes.
“We can do this on the ex-
isting ground inside the city,”
he said. “There’s absolutely
no reason to spend all that
money going up that hillside.
Absolutely none. It won’t
make them any safer, it will
not make them any smarter.
It will not make them any of
those things.”
After a public hearing
on both ordinances, coun-
cilors unanimously voted to
approve both ordinances in
first and second readings by
title only. A third reading is
planned for the council’s Oct.
9 meeting.
“This is one of the key
pieces in moving the schools
up onto the new property,”
former superintendent and
member of the district’s con-
struction oversight committee
Doug Dougherty said in Au-
gust. “This is a major step.”
Should the council pass
the third reading as expected,
Dunzer said he intends to file
an appeal of the decision with
the state’s Land Use of Board
of Appeals.
Four professional pro-
grammers, including two
Microsoft employees in
Redmond, Washington, will
be making a difference at
Seaside High School via a
program called Technology
Education and Literacy in
Schools, or TEALS.
Jeff Hiatt, a local profes-
sional programmer who tele-
commutes to a company in
Portland, will be in the class-
room in person as a teaching
assistant.
Sam Nelson, a Seaside
High School graduate who
lives in Springfield, where he
works for a startup company,
will support students via tele-
conference.
Microsoft employees San-
dy Spinrad and Sean Mitchell
will teacher the class via tele-
conference.
TEALS is in four schools
in Oregon — one each in
Seaside, Bend, Portland, and
Amity and in 352 schools na-
tionally this year.
“One new program that
I’m really excited about is our
TEALS program,” Seaside
High School Principal Jeff
Roberts said at the start of the
school year.
TEALS is a cooperative
effort between Microsoft
Philanthropies and school dis-
tricts to introduce students to
coding, Roberts said.
Microsoft provides volun-
teers who will work directly
with a classroom teacher to
co-teach classes on coding.
“After two years of
co-teaching the class we will
have the ability to offer the
class independently and turn
it into an AP computer science
program,” Roberts said.
The goal of TEALS is to
help ensure that high schools
teachers teaching computer
science teach to a student’s
capacity through high-caliber
curriculum and volunteer sup-
port, Anthony Papini, Volun-
teer Engagement Manager for
Microsoft Philanthropies said.
Volunteers are industry
professionals who have aca-
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Emma Dullaart in foreground; Luke Nelson, at right.
demic and professional back-
ground in computer science
have gone through training.
The goal is to partner edu-
cators with computer science
experts together in the class-
room, Papini said.
Seaside School District
Curriculum Director Sande
Brown said she learned about
the TEALS program when
she went to the National Sci-
ence Conference in Portland a
year ago.
“It is difficult to find high-
school teachers for computer
science as people with CS
degrees usually end up going
into the better paying field of
computer science program-
ming/ coding,” Brown said.
“So Microsoft wanted to
come alongside current teach-
ers in schools and help build
their capacity to teach com-
puter science.”
In Seaside, science and
math teacher Doug Mitchell
already had some program-
ming experience. He volun-
teered to be the TEALS teach-
er, Brown said.
Classroom teachers are
supported by the four pro-
grammers.
“The first year they sup-
port a beginning program-
ming class, and the second
year they support an advanced
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Kevin Wang, a Microsoft
software engineer who
founded the TEALS pro-
gram.
programming class, increas-
ing the responsibility of the
classroom teacher over time
to take over the class,” Brown
said.
The professional program-
mers leave after two years.
The school district pays
the programmers a stipend.
The school district also seeks
local professional program-
mers to teacher or provide
classroom support.
“TEALS will provide
programmers if we can’t,”
Brown said.
Courses include an intro-
duction to computer science
course using SNAP, a visual
object-oriented language.
“The goal with this course
is not so much to teach cod-
ing, but to teach the founda-
tion of computer science,”
Brown said. “To make sure
students understand how this
all works.”
Students learn using
games like Hangman, Space
Invaders and Mario Brothers.
The second semester intro-
duces data types, functions,
loops and the Python lan-
guage.
The results appear to be
paying off, Papini said. “We
have seen, consistently, year
to year, half of the students
who take TEALS courses say
they’re more likely to pursue
careers in computer science.”
Nine out of 10 students
say TEALS is beneficial to
their learning, and TEALS
students scored higher on na-
tional computer programming
exams.
TEALS also provides the
curriculum and summer train-
ing for the classroom teacher
and the professional program-
mers.
“We want to continue to
make a deep impact in Sea-
side and other parts of Oregon
to ensure students have access
to rigorous high-quality com-
puter science and that teachers
are able to build their capacity
to teach computer science,”
Papini said.
Seaside gets new online
science curriculum
Students learn
by doing, not
just watching
By R.J. Marx
Cannon Beach Gazette
Students at Seaside High
School will see big changes
this fall with a newly adopted
science and technology cur-
riculum.
A
science
program,
STEMscopes, helps kids get
experiential learning to meet
national standards. A comput-
er science program developed
by Microsoft helps students
get the kind of computer train-
ing needed to understand ad-
vanced programming.
The program was devel-
oped by teachers and scien-
tists at Rice University in
Houston to meet national
standards for science, known
as the Next Generation Sci-
ence Standards.
“Teachers were very excit-
ed during the training today,”
Sande Brown, the Seaside
School District’s curriculum
director, said after a teach-
er training at the high school
Wednesday. “We know that
excitement will translate
to the students once school
starts. Excited students are en-
gaged students, and engaged
students are learning.”
The program focuses on
connecting science to reading,
writing, speaking and math
and helps students prepare for
careers in science and tech-
nology, Brown said. Students
learn by doing, not just watch-
ing, and kids work in groups
to solve problems.
“We are also excited about
this curriculum because it is
our school district’s first com-
pletely online curriculum,”
Brown said. “By purchasing
this online curriculum instead
of textbooks, we were able to
save money and use some of
that money to purchase com-
puters and science materials
and equipment for the class-
rooms.”
Although the curriculum
is online, teachers have the
flexibility of downloading
and printing paper copies of
worksheets, information pag-
es or tests online in a program
that varies by grade level.
“The focus, however, is to
have students doing science,
not just be on the computer,”
Brown said.
The text is in both English
and Spanish, and the comput-
er can read out loud text in
both languages.
The “textbook” language is
differentiated by grade level,
above grade level, and below
grade level so students of a
range of reading levels can ac-
cess the new learning, Brown
said. It also has a connection
to news and other books on
relevant science topics.
The program is easily up-
dated and the company makes
corrections or suggested revi-
sions quickly.
The program focuses on
what educators call the “5
E’s” of science education,
Brown said: engage, explore,
explain, elaborate and evalu-
ate.
“This is a big leap forward
in having the new bonus of
having an online resource,”
Seaside School District Su-
perintendent Sheila Roley
said.
The school district typi-
cally buys new textbooks ev-
ery seven years. The online
component will provide the
opportunity for continuous
updates, she added.
“The critical thing to take
away is that we still believe
that science instruction is a
process of discovery for stu-
dents,” Roley said. “The heart
of the program is still sci-
ence.”
WE’VE GOT
YOUR BUSINESS.
AND YOUR BACK.
We take a more personal approach to business lending.
At Ctlumbia Bank, we care as much abtut ytur business as ytu dt. That’s why
tur lenders take the time tt truly understand ytur business needs, then wtrk cltsely
with ytu every step tf the prtcess, thrtugh cltsing and beytnd. St ytu can feel gttd that
ytu’re getting the best ltan ftr ytur business, and ftr ytu. Visit ColumbiaBank.com.
Member FDIC
Equal Htusing Lender