Those Who Can't Do - James Starnes

so as computer science teachers um we're as endangered a species as all of those of animals up there um year on year people are dropping out a profession we're not even recruiting enough people uh there's the animations for it oh well um bottom line that's the of what was actually recruited into new teachers this year this though over these years Top Line was a Target there's a bit of Gap here and we don't actually have those skills to actually encourage new people into teaching and to encourage new those students to actually carry on what we're passionate about into few further jobs and and that makes us sad and just to add one more thing there's over 4,000 teachers that left

the profession just last year some of it going be through natural attrition so retirement moving into other jobs but the vast majority is people moving into completely different sectors that are not at all related to teaching anymore so to frame a bit of context T us to how many teachers actually have a qualifications relevant over 60% have no post a level qualifications relevant to the subject of the rest about 28% have a qualification that is in some way relevant and the rest have just a qualification might not be in Computing in slightest and when I say relevant degree you're probably thinking these but these are just a small sample of the ones that are actually relevant

according to the government statistics and don't know about you some of them seem more relevant than others French studies with Computing doesn't feel like it's going to be that heavy on the Computing and more heavy on the genot Fon um but if we look at the hours tour it's a little bit of a better picture so last chart is still up there in top left for you but the hours tour yeah there are more hours talk by people with an actual degree in subject or a relevant degree in subject and that's the number of people we have taken GCS and a levels of it's this last year it's quite male heavy especially in computer science and

you realistically also thinking okay so we got that many people being taught by that many people there's not going to be a consistent quality education to get them in the door to a good University that they want to go to and then somewhere in that 0.1% of people with a relevant qualification not say mine is entirely relevant you've got LI or me um that's my background that's some stuff about me I have a degree in computer fics in security I'm probably one of one in the country that's got a degree in friend in security and is a teacher if there's anybody else let me know I would like a friend um I do some Union stuff as well

I'm not going to bang on too much about it there is a pay campaign at the moment please support your teachers but there's a bit of a background as to the school I teach at we're ranked number one in the Northwest number 10 in the country it's a good school those are the kind of grades we get and I got as recognized by ntsc first how we deliver is way more than a lot of schools do my stepson school for example it works on a carousel so they have a ter of computing ter of resistant materials a term of food Tech and if you're thinking that's not really enough you're right so even with all of that what we

do are we add some extra stuff on so we've got Cod club sub security club bit lockpicking in there I do a D and D Club because no um and we do s first girls competition every year and that's targeted at year eight getting them interested early and it works it's worked consistently as we've gone through but I'll give you a bit of a background to me the weirdo that's in front of you so anyone from ning in the room by the way two people I'm surprised you actually put your hands up in um so I went to a school called Wen comprehensive it's now the Caron Academy or something like that um when I was

there didn't really enjoy it it also had a slight habit of being a bit you know flammable um didn't really go well uh went to highp 6 form didn't really enjoy that either um took myself off to Netherland for a little bit met someone oo oh and back I come um and then somewhere in my a levels I decided to get a job that only a true nerd could possibly get at that time and this company no longer exists yes it was Ms and the combination of all that and something that we'll come to a little bit later culminated in a slight tad bit of failure I did not get the AEL on not in the

slightest so what's a person to do with very few prospects in life oh yeah bar job after bar job after bar drob after bar drob and you're seeing BT there thinking oh there's a bit of a techy hope nope I was a 909 operator up until about 2008 and I don't know if there's something relevant that happened in 2008 maybe a slight economic recession uh so yeah didn't keep that job but I did start being self-employed because that's what everyone did then I eventually apply to University of New York thinking I'm a major student now I'm 20 some odd time to do something so I'll apply for a course what course should I apply I know you've already

seen spoiler open to your friends in security thinking oh yeah it's going to be nerdy nah nursing this is taking you on a bit of a roller coaster isn't it um rightfully they had a good sense to go nope uh so then obviously carried on there did a bit of Union stuff discovered unions were a thing was course rep faculty officer then BP education and got a job as a systems admin in dispens advice service at University that was cool got me really interested in different aspects of life because of that job at dispens advice it became much more apparent to me that I was dyslexic AF and that kind of informed some of the

earlier fun bits of my school career I got to do some wonderful stuff with the Union set up my data recovery service as part of the Student Union eventually decided teaching was the way to go because you know one of my parents is a teacher the's an information risk just do two things in a weird way um got a job at alter girls in 2018 you're thinking now I've been down this road with times and timelines before within something happened a couple of years after that that so that spurred on a bit more of the Union stuff and kind of expedited my way through Union stuff doing health and safety stuff and then a bunch more

boring Things That No One actually cares about but along the way through my work I was able to get school of credit of both side first gets me the experience to come in here to bore you today and see where it goes so be the lead a little bit so you've probably heard the phrase those who can do those who can't teach I prefer a slightly more inspirational role model because those that can't do teach and those that can't teach teach J and that's why I don't teach PE for that and other physicality based reasons um but Jack Black was right I couldn't do the whole working in an office at the desk constantly Buzz happening around me for

no particularly good reason or working long into night in a glass box that makes me sad and die inside or the mountains paperwork know I'm not counting marking as paperwork they are slightly different um or that I imagine that is probably half of your lives um but what I could do was share my knowledge and experience and my passion and S from people and encourage people to be independent inquirers and watch them and celebrate the successes of them getting their gcses their a levels and going through that whole school experience I got to go on call free trips really call free trips got to see current work on Artemus that was awesome um got to take a photo with a

actual real life astronaut who I probably made sick because look how pale and ill I am there but I also got to touch a Falcon 9 rocket how many of you have touched a Falcon 9 rocket thought um got to shake hands with a Tory not the worst Tory um he's all right um but got is recognized uh by cyber first for what we deliver in our school um got to runs and capture the flags and bestow a small passion for tiny rubber ducks and apparently this person was having a lot of problems at that moment in time but you could as well you could Inspire brilliant people to actually join the sector um get them hanging off

every time War Story my War Stories are tiny but they sound big in that classroom use your actual knowledge to go beyond this rubbish curriculum and actually go into detail on a lot of stuff top GCC got one's a level that's how much cyber security is actually in the National curriculum at the moment I've seen some schools teach that the GCSE stuff both bits of that two lessons if you're sitting there thinking that's not enough time to even scratch the surface you're right at a level it's just buried in with networks as an afterthought but you can students about the possibilities that are out there you know what opportunities are out there for people definely exciting with it

drag more women into infect careers that one's a really important one for me and there reason why I've not left that school it is same sex school it is a old girl school that's why I'm still there i' be a for CH rather than just doing the same thing we did when we were at school of learning how to use word excel and PowerPoint and if the teacher was being inspired iy maybe a bit of [Music] access but there's a few reasons you didn't become a teacher as a kid you reeled and rebelled against Authority you had miserable role models and they were counting down the days until the end of term the uni wanted real money you

thought it was too much responsibility you didn't want to spend more time at you as an adult you can't stand kids too much marketing and you feel like you're the oldest person in the world it's not the case what I didn't realize about teaching was when it comes to that the nerdiest stuff you're going to be that expert in the room that's been said before you probably the expert in rooms that you're in already but you are definitely going to be in a room full of teachers that struggle to even turn on the computer so having that experience and some of that background knowledge to actually help them with the real world security threats that they will face is

it totally invaluable you can add in those real world bits of knowledge when I deliver my lessons I always go do you want the real world answer or the spec answer invariably they want both because they're greedy but I give the real world answer to frame how the spec answer should actually go into their exams and it makes it understandable you get shap on something you care about out and the money isn't Dreadful asterisk so things I've done uh I've done a bunch of stuff in the few years that I've been at that school uh some of that is trips CTS got a recognized started D andd Club rubber duck is making a reappearance here and I bumped into a student uh

former student at be leet and again today um uh that is my bucket list happy place it used to be I used to think when I started teaching it be awesome at one point in the future bump into a student again they buy me a pint or I buy them a pint it would be a nice your wholesome moment that eclipsed it in an instant if you want to retrain as a teacher you get 28 grand tax free I be like 28 grand taxfree it's not an insignificant sum and the requirements for that are automatic if you wanted to go for the British computer Society uh versary you get an extra two grand for writing an

essay I'm sure we can manage that if you're interested Links at bot uh that is the current state of T pay it ain't great it ain't Dreadful it's kind of in longine with civil service but for some of you you will realize that it might take about 5 years to be on a par with a grab scheme at some my live bar is but it's a guaranteed and safe job and it's guaranteed progression year on year you're not having to fight in performance about yourself some advantages though we get long holidays you're only actually working 195 days out of any year so you got a lot of time for side projects side gigs whatever F pension is

decent you're being really efficient trainer when you turn to your workplace or if you go back into the sector and it also makes it a lot easier to deal with clients because as we know clients can be a bit Muppet so actually being able to reframe things and explain things the way that a year seven would understand actually sometimes quite beneficial every day is going to be massively different so I take my last couple of weeks um one day I've had people really excited and happy because they've managed to get a place on some competition or something whereas other days you got have students crying that they can't integrate their Django container in Docker to invested

their stack and really really upset about it in fact that student has actually got a slideshow of all of the meltdowns and breakdowns that she's had over the course of doing that project with a lot of crying votes but there's a lot of educational and student discounts that you qualify for as a teacher you have a school email address that is pretty much exactly the same as a student one so you get student discounts so GitHub Microsoft imagine depending on way you work Apple disc app Samsung my phone was 10% cheaper just because I work there and uni beans uni beans uni uni beans Etc all of those are ones that you know you can

use as an industry though if you're thinking yeah no teaching still is not a thing I want to do I actually earn real money thank you um you can support in other ways teaching is built on the fact that we need students to get work experience you probably got where you were because somewhere along the way someone gave you a bit of a chance to get and see get into a place and see how the world worked in that sector and then you liked it and you stayed you built connections you could partner with local school on a bigger level could be funding could be talks it could be anything but events and talks are

massively important uh especially for if you're in position where you are a woman and you're in the sector I definitely you to actually go in and share your life experience with them because especially in a mixed school it's the girls that are go feel sidelight in an all girl school everyone feels like they can contribute in the exact same ways in mix schools I've been at they've not there's been a couple per class they' sat in a corner never raised a hand never said boo to a goose all of the conversation in that classroom is being dominated by the mail students give that guest lecture sponsor events there's organizations out there already like Computing schools cyber

first teach Computing which are amazing for what you can actually do to help run a part of a CTF or provide some uh funding or an opportunity that could be there like a summer program or whatever could even just be throwing a bunch of stickers at the situ situation because everyone loves stickers as we know it gets your name out there and it sticks in their mind as well as onto the thing that they're stuck it to what that company does and that even exist as an opportunity for them but coming back to going into schools be a role model going in and actually showing you face and being there is the biggest impact I've been quite quick on this I did also

start quite early but I'm running 10 minutes before does anyone have any questions

yeah yeah so the question was yeah so the question was uh the girls in a mixed class where do I see the drop off in them asking questions and things can contribute it tends to be that the conversation is already very dominated by the male students so there'll be scoffs sniggers and yeah a lot of the problem is the male attitude towards the female students in those classes um so there's a lot of work that needs to be done in schools to actually make it an accessible playing field for girls in Tech or who want to get into Tech some of it could be the answer of do segregated classes for particularly techy subjects that's one option that I have seen

proposed and done in other schools obviously I'm in a position of privilege I I work in an all girl school everyone shares equally it all works but in a mix school yeah you've got that male ego that's going oh you don't know that I do and then they pipe up girls will be more studious and go off and find the answer themselves when they realize that they're not getting heard whereas boys will just go I didn't get the answer me any other questions

yeah so the question was uh with AI coming in and student choosing it how do I work against work against it or work with it you work around yeah um it's a difficult question and it's one that doesn't currently have a good answer um for me I would like to be encouraging the use of generative AI a little bit but utilizing as if you would use any other research Source it's great for doing things like I've found some random code on GitHub I don't understand what it does please explain it there I see the amazing benefit to it might not explain it right but it's up to you as you as a person or them as a student to

actually verify what it is and we talk about AI having hallucinations and AI not being trustable as a source we're going closer and closer to it being untrust from untrustable to trust but verify and I think that's the way it's going to go on the other side of it do I see AIT taking my job maybe maybe there's going to be parts of it that are going to be automated and streamlined by it but only as much as in the same way that I don't carry around a physical paper markbook and physical paper registers anymore I use edulink I use Sims I use XL to track marks I don't have to touch paper much in my life

anymore we don't do class books we use one note it's it's one of those hands on approach to learning rather

hands yeah so to come back was um so a lot more handson um and yeah um a what I do particularly is very Hands-On one of the things in the things I've done tick list thing uh that I didn't mentioned but I feel it's important to actually emphasize is I do make a point of emphasizing real world Network hardware for example because yeah I've got random rackm switches knocking about because nerd but I know not every teacher will have and I know definitely not many teachers have even seen real Network equipment outside of what provided by Virgin Media Sky Etc and that is also the only frame of reference a lot of students have so I do

try and make it more Hands-On and yeah we can use AI to kind of enhance that in some other ways get them to get it to reframe things in a way that they'll understand get them to be a bit more independent and go off looking in different directions on their own rather than just expecting to be spoonfed information and knowledge just so they can pass a test thetive Market language allowing children or recommend

children so uh to paraphrase question uh going to embrace AI um I hope so um but realistically as a profession of people I don't know how quickly um it's there are some teachers who are close-ish to retirement not massively close uh but maybe like 20 10 20 20 years off and they're thinking new thing not going to bother it's not actually impacting my day-to-day I can still Teach as I am nothing has changed with art or music or whatever that I don't know already so why would I utilize AI for that it going make my life more difficult I'm not going to be able to work out if it's a students work or not and that's that's the issue it's

going to go generationally that's my opinion every much thank you very much thank you really EX