Conard Curriculum Night

Hi! My name is Jackie Corricelli. I teach two amazing classes at Conard, AP CS A and AP CS Principles, and then the rest of my time I work on moving all schools in West Hartford forward toward a vision of Computer Science for ALL students.

This is my 23rd year of teaching. I started as a math teacher and now teach exclusively computer science. I am also involved with the creation of new computer science courses, projects that encourage the integration of CS in PreK-8 classrooms, explaining CS course options, leading our district AI and CS Teams, course-specific integration projects such as Human Behavior in a Digital World (where we integrated CS in Social Studies), district wide data analysis, maintaining our district site, and other state and national level projects.

I believe that education is the key to making the future better and that computer science is the next step we need to take. When I grew up, I was too afraid to take computer science. I did not really know what it was. I graduated from UConn in 2000 with a degree in Mathematics & Statistics and was hired at Raytheon as a Systems Engineer. I was there for an intense three years of learning a lot about computer science, teamwork, and problem solving. When I think about that time, I know I learned skills from some amazing engineers that I use in the classroom every day. Still, my favorite thing is working with people to tackle a new or challenging problem and to learn while doing so. Fortunately, this happens a LOT in our classroom!

Some fun facts about me:

• I love dogs and horses.
• My husband and I met in high school, while running cross country.
• I have a 17 year old daughter who a senior at East Granby High.
• I love hiking, travel, meeting people, and learning new things.
• I feel so lucky to love what I do, mostly because of your students.

• All curricular information can be found by navigating to corricelli.com. Click on the photo that corresponds to the course.
• There will be a course schedule shown there.
• This schedule is accurate 1-2 days out. It might change if you are looking ahead.
• Students can use this for their planning purposes if they are absent.
• In addition, all assignments are managed via Google Classroom. I am happy to invite parents or guardians if you have not been invited already. Please let me know.
  

AP CS Principles is a broad introduction to the discipline of computer science. It is designed to be equivalent to a semester 1 programming class for non-STEM majors. Our AP Exam is the afternoon of Thursday, May 14. It is 3 hours long. The multiple choice part of the test is 2 hours long. The last hour will be spent on students writing prompts for a coding project they will complete in class.

• Students learn about programming, impact of computing, network ideas, and data. There is a major focus in this class on helping students to explain their reasoning. Many students find this course to be great preparation for AP CS A.
• There is a lot of content to cover, but a lot of it is learned in class during labs.
• Homework should be used by students to practice what they learned in class.
• Students should not be struggling on their own and homework should not be longer than 45 minutes.
• If it seems like your student is confused or stressed about this course, please have your student reach out to me for some support. Before school most days of the week, I am here.
• At home setup details are here. Please have students see me with issues. I can usually figure out laptop issues best if the student can bring their laptop in and show me what is happening.
• See THIS LINK for our grading policies.

AP CS A is a course that is focused on programming in java. It is designed to be equivalent to a semester 1 programming class for STEM majors. Our AP Exam is the afternoon of Friday, May 15. It is 3 hours long. Half of the test is Multiple Choice and the other half is handwritten code to prompts.

• Students learn object oriented design, how to write code in java, and how to work collaboratively with others to solve problems.
• There is a lot of content to cover, but a lot of it is learned in class during labs.
• Homework should be used by students to practice what they learned in class.
• Students should not be struggling on their own and homework should not be longer than 45 minutes.
• If it seems like your student is confused or stressed about this course, please have your student reach out to me for some support. Before school most days of the week, I am here.
• At home setup details are here. Please have students see me with issues. I can usually figure out laptop issues best if the student can bring their laptop in and show me what is happening.
• See THIS LINK for our grading policies.

EMAIL: jackie_corricelli@whps.org

WEBSITE: corricelli.com