[Miles Mackenzie]: Can you introduce yourself?
[Alice Fisher]: Sure. My name is Alice Fisher, and I work at Bellaire High School. I teach computer science.

[Shirley Zhu]: When did you realize you wanted to become a teacher and what made you want to teach?
[AF]: So, I realized I wanted to become a teacher when I was a sophomore at Rice, and I was taking differential calculus and I remember being in the library and I had a friend with me and he had some questions. So, I was explaining to him some of the problems from the homework and it felt good to be able to help someone else with the math problems. So, I was like “Oh wow, I really enjoy doing this. I enjoy helping other people learn a particular topic or help them problem-solve”, so at that point, I decided that I was going to teach math. I had to talk to someone at Rice, and I entered the education program at that point.

[MM]: So you’ve been teaching for a while now, what do you think is the most important trait teachers should have?
[AF]: So I think a teacher should first of all have a lot of patience because it’s not about you getting the material or accomplishing a task, it’s helping other people reach their goals. People learn at such different rates and in different modalities; I feel like you have to be really patient with the process of letting them develop at their own pace. Another trait I think is being open to change. I like trying different techniques or different ways to teach every year. I don’t normally teach the same way every year, so it’s almost like a lab. I consider the classroom like a lab. I test out how it went and get feedback. I really do feel like it’s an iterative process of teaching.

[SZ]: So now you’re teaching AP Computer Science A and AP Computer Science Principles and with these challenging courses, what do you find is the most difficult part in teaching the curriculum?
[AF]: So definitely I think the variability in student backgrounds and the different pace that they learn. So I have students like y’all that pick up the content pretty quickly and pretty easily and then I have students who are still struggling with the basics of programming and they’re sitting in the same class. So I don’t want to bore the kids who get the content quickly, but I don’t want to leave kids behind either so to be able to juggle all the different levels and make everyone feel welcome at the same time is challenging. So, I try to get students to help each other out. But I also want students like you, Shirley and Miles, that you’re learning as well and you’re getting something out of the course and not just sitting and waiting, so that’s definitely a big challenge.

[MM]: How do you keep the students engaged in the classroom?
[AF]: For CS Principles, I think there’s a lot of activities, a lot of hands-on activities, that we do and a lot of group activities as well. So, I think the curriculum is pretty engaging already. I think keeping true to the curriculum that I use — it’s a pretty engaging curriculum. So with CSA, I think it’s more challenging to be engaging because it can be more of a dry class, it’s really like a math class, so I think the first thing is trying to get students to work with each other. I think we’re inherently really social, in particular, high school students are very social, so I think it’s just fun to work with other people and talk to each other rather than just sitting at your desk and working at the problem in silence. I think getting people to interact is inherently an engaging activity. And then the other thing I think is trying to make connections among topics. I think the students who are in CSA, they’re already really interested in programming, so not just teaching to the exam but trying to help students see connections between various topics and making sure that I’m teaching at a depth that I think is engaging to people who are in the class. And then using demos like doing demos, getting people out of their seats, and having a variety of tasks like doing things on paper, doing things on whiteboards, doing things in the Repl.it environment or whatever environment you use. I think that having a change in how you’re solving a problem helps as well.

[SZ]: Do you have a favorite activity that you do with the students?
[AF]: I love recursion. I think it’s such a cool way to solve problems, so probably in CSA I really look forward to recursion because I just think it’s a neat topic. In CS Principles, anything where they’re asked to create something on their own like the color pixelation widget activity I really enjoy because I like seeing what the students can come up with. The programming activities, the group projects I really enjoy getting them to collaborate and then seeing the results of that. I like giving the students a platform where they can be creative and then being able to see the results of that. So that’s really enjoyable.

[MM]: What is the most rewarding part of being a teacher?
[AF]: I think that one of the most rewarding things is when a student struggles and then kind of realizes “Oh, I need to put in a little more work to succeed in this class” and then I see this transformation and then the student is able to come in and get extra help, and then they actually do really well on an assessment or they’re just getting the content. I think that’s one of the most gratifying parts of the job: the growth that you can see in students, that’s very rewarding. I think also connecting students to opportunities as well like connecting students to opportunities to meet people outside the classroom. The Coding Club and the Girls Who Code Club I find that really rewarding as well, just helping students network with the community outside of school walls.

[SZ]: Do you have anything else you’d want to say or any advice to anyone who’s considering being a teacher?
[AF]: I think teaching can be really challenging in a lot of different ways. It can be very exhausting, but I think if you keep at it it can be very rewarding. I think that you don’t teach for the money, that’s for sure, so people kind of know the compensation’s not always comparable to the amount of work that you put into a job. But if that’s not a big priority for you or you have the means to be able to still manage fine economically, then I really do think it’s one of the most rewarding jobs out there. So later on when I look back on my life, I think I’ll be really happy with the fact that I had an impact on kids’ lives.