35 [Interview] One Voice in CS – Allison Braley

Podcast Transcript

JULIE: Thank you so much for joining us today.

ALLISON: Thanks for having me.

JULIE: I’m really excited for the audience to hear from someone who has been a classroom teacher and then transitioned into working for the Department of Education.

ALLISON: And more importantly, I was a computer science classroom teacher. I try to bring that up whenever I go places and talk to teachers, because I feel like it gives me a more authentic feel. The experiences I share aren’t something I read or watched — they’re my own actual experiences from my classroom. And now, working for the DOE, I’ve been lucky enough to travel to other computer science classrooms. I’ve come to your classroom, and I’ve been able to see a lot of really hands-on computer science in action all around Maine, which has been really helpful in my day-to-day work.

JULIE: And I think as a prior computer science teacher, what’s really key is that you know what it’s like to teach this content. Your role at the DOE is to support and represent these teachers — and you’ve actually done it, and fairly recently.

ALLISON: Yes. I taught in Bucksport at RSU 25 at Bucksport Middle School and left in April of 2024. So I’ve only been with the DOE for about a year. But those experiences have really shaped how I work with teachers. Early on, I was really focused on every kid needing to know HTML forwards and backwards. Then halfway through my first year I realized: most of these kids are not going to become computer programmers. I had a standalone computer science class that was required — every middle schooler had me for four years. So it became: what do kids who are not going to be programmers need to get out of my classroom to be successful long-term? That really started to center on computational thinking, problem solving, and recovering from failure — experiencing failure in school in a celebrated way. That early experience guided my philosophy of how I see computer science, and it’s never changed. It strengthened my belief that every kid should be experiencing computer science, and it started right there in my first year of teaching.

JULIE: I really love that specific example of HTML. I think we all fall into the trap of believing the most important thing is the content we’re experts in. But the more you get into teaching — especially a required class — you realize that not everyone is going to become a programmer. So what really matters?

ALLISON: Exactly. And when AI came on the scene, there was this panic in the computer science community: is computer science going to go away? For me, it goes back to that core belief from my first year of teaching. It’s not about the programming. Kids don’t need to know HTML or Java to understand computer science. But they still need to experience those things — not to become experts, but to have a rough idea of how programming works, how their computer works, how their phone works. Those are still really important key components, even in the world of AI. The hyper-focus on programming doesn’t need to be as strong as it was four or five years ago. We can let AI handle a lot of that. But just throwing away programming because AI is here feels wrong to me. Kids still need to understand how the magical things they use every day work.

JULIE: I love your thought process. Your classroom experience has clearly shaped your philosophy. But I’m curious — how does that philosophy translate to working at the state level?

ALLISON: When I first started in education, I was in special education, and a psychologist told us: your overachieving kids are going to be successful no matter who is in front of the classroom. It’s your struggling students who require the quality teaching. That became my philosophy. I made sure I was really focusing on all the kids — I would give instruction as if everyone in the classroom had ADHD, with visual instructions paired with verbal delivery. I’ve brought that to the DOE. My never-ending job is figuring out how to make computer science easier for a regular classroom teacher. Especially K–8. My personal philosophy is that standalone computer science classes are really important, but finding K–8 computer science teachers is genuinely hard. One of the things I work on is: how do I help a 45-year-old teacher who barely knows how to use Google and is being asked to integrate computer science? How do I make it so easy it’s on a silver platter? The average teacher in Maine is a late-forties female, and how do I make it so she sees this is not a huge lift? She is very capable of teaching these concepts, and once she gets past the initial panic of thinking she needs a computer science degree to teach a third grader — she doesn’t. She just needs to understand the concepts, and then it comes a lot easier.

JULIE: I think that’s so important. We also send a poor message to K–8 elementary teachers when we only talk about computer science in terms of jobs and college. If I’m a second-grade teacher and you’re telling me to add this just so kids might have great jobs someday — why would I do all this extra work?

ALLISON: Exactly. If you’re not explaining that computer science is really about digital literacy and computational thinking — and watching kids get excited because their program has a bug and now they need to debug it — you’re missing the point. In math class, making a mistake isn’t a celebration. In English, getting something wrong is just wrong. But in computer science, when kids hit a bug, they say, ‘Oh no, I made a mistake’ — and then they spend time going back through, fixing their errors. They’re experiencing failure in this really positive way, learning how to recover from it. They don’t even see it as failure. They just see it as: there’s a bug in my game and I need to fix it. When you explain that to K–8 teachers, they’re way more excited about introducing computer science than they would be if it’s just about future jobs.

JULIE: It sounds like you’re almost a salesperson.

ALLISON: Totally. And it’s an important role. Whenever I think about the DOE as a teacher, I think: what can the DOE do for me? What connections can it give me to other programs, to what’s happening in the state, to opportunities for my students? And I think any teacher does that.

JULIE: I ended up telling a story at a meeting a couple of days ago while we were here, and three other computer science teachers said they’d had the exact same experience. Can you share yours?

ALLISON: Yes. I had to go to an IEP meeting for a student — one of my favorites. Never had a problem with him. He excelled in my class. He would figure out that when his work was done, I’d let him sit on Scratch and work on his game. He’d bang out a 45-minute assignment in 15 or 20 minutes, then spend the rest of class working on his game and saying, ‘Mrs. Braley, come look at what I did!’ And I get into this IEP meeting, and around the table, teacher after teacher is saying: I can’t get him to do his work. He yells and screams in my class. He storms out. And I am literally confused — I thought I was in the wrong meeting. When they got to me I said, ‘I don’t have problems with him. He loves my class.’ They all stared at me. And I’ve had other teachers tell me they’ve had the exact same experience. Because in coding, when he made a mistake, it wasn’t a catastrophe — it was a challenge. Where’s the bug? How do I find it? How do I fix it? And when he found it and fixed it, that was a victory. That story, for me, encompasses why computer science is especially powerful in the lower grades, and for some of our special education students. I also have a daughter with dyslexia. When you can’t read, every class is a struggle. In my class, she was successful because she didn’t need all those other things. Computer science was one of the few places she really shone.

JULIE: You’ve mentioned several times the concept of using games and students not realizing how much they’re learning. As an elective teacher, a lot of my content is seen as just fun. But sometimes our content is looked down on. I can imagine that’s also true inside the DOE — computer science isn’t even part of Maine’s state learning results yet. How do you overcome the perception that what we teach is just a fad?

ALLISON: I’ve had a superintendent tell me — and this was back when I was a teacher — ‘I think that’s just a fad.’ In fact, she said it in an email. But in Maine, I think we’re really lucky. The DOE, for the most part, has been embracing computer science more and more. A few years ago, with COVID relief funding, Governor Mills allocated money to buy computer science kits for schools. There is a genuine push, a real appreciation. And as AI gets more attention, rather than taking away from computer science, it’s actually bringing more focus to it. Nicole Davis, our AI specialist at the DOE, and I have started to get a lot more attention. We’ve been brought into a lot more conversations. I’ve been working with earth science teams, with ESL specialists — there’s a rising tide of people looking to integrate computer science and technology into other areas. When I talk to colleagues from other states, they’re shocked that I get to go to schools, work with teachers, and talk directly with people. That seems normal to us in Maine, but it’s apparently not the case everywhere.

JULIE: And you have both a computer science specialist and an AI specialist working together at the state level — which is actually pretty unique.

ALLISON: Very. Nicole and I presented at CSTA a couple of weeks ago on exactly that topic. There are people in the computer science community who see AI as a threat to education. I understand why. But I see AI as a pillar of computer science — not separate from it, just like the internet isn’t separate, and cybersecurity isn’t separate, and digital footprint isn’t separate. They’re all pillars. And the more Nicole and I work together, the better we both do. When she was developing AI guidance, I was reviewing it for computer science. When I’m working on computer science things, she’s finding the AI connections. We make each other better. We talk every day. We were literally cited as an example for other state supervisors — they said, ‘Look at what Maine is doing.’ Other states have their AI person and their CS person siloed in completely different buildings who never interact. That would create so much redundancy and miss so many amazing opportunities.

JULIE: That’s remarkable. And it makes sense given Maine’s size — we’re small enough to try things like this and large enough to have the support to do it.

ALLISON: Exactly. Maine was one of the first states to push one-to-one devices, back with Governor Angus King. I think our size and our geography make this kind of collaboration possible.

JULIE: So as we wrap up — what’s the most important thing you’ll be working on, and what advice would you give to teachers and DOE members who are listening?

ALLISON: Right now my biggest focus is helping teachers in Maine feel more comfortable with computer science and getting them recognition for their efforts. We don’t have a certification for computer science in Maine yet, but we’re working toward it. In the meantime, how do we recognize a fifth-grade social studies teacher who spends a week at CS Summer of Fun and brings those concepts back to her classroom? That recognition matters. And on the equity side — when I started in Bucksport, computer science was a required class, a unified arts special, every year for four years. Now, when you look at the Bucksport High School robotics team — which competes on a world stage — there’s a large percentage of females on that team. And I believe it’s because when those girls got to high school, computer science was just something everybody did. Of course a girl would do computer science. Why wouldn’t she? She had been doing it since middle school. The disparity in gender representation in CS isn’t inevitable. It often comes down to when you start reaching students. If you get them young and show them it’s for everyone, they don’t grow up thinking it’s not for them. And then your equity challenge gets a lot better.

JULIE: There is a lot in here for people to think about. Thank you so much, Allison.

ALLISON: Thank you for having me. Go Maine!

JULIE: Go Bucksport — the best!