Data Science for High School Teachers

Introduction

Before the pandemic, a colleague of mine approached me about offering a senior elective in Data Science at our school. It took two years of development through 2020 and 2021, and we finally launched our course for the 2022-2023 school year. The course offers seniors a chance to take a project-based approach to applied mathematics, and it counts as a full year’s worth of math credits. So far, our student body in this course has been extremely diverse; the course attracts students who have always loved math and are looking for more as well as students who have had negative experiences with high school math who are looking for something different. Putting all of those students in the same room has been an awesome challenge. Here, I will be posting my course syllabus, materials, lesson plans, project sheets, and other pedagogical materials. If you use or adapt any of them, please be sure to include an attribution!

Syllabus

Follow this link to get my student-facing syllabus for the 2024-2025 school year. The textbook readings indicated are from CourseKata, whom I have felt privileged to partner with in development of this course. I highly recommend checking out their multiple textbooks, which are interactive and provide a teenager-friendly introduction to coding in R that assumes no prior knowledge of computer science. I’ve worked with them for several years now, and they are incredibly professional, responsive to feedback, and eager to reach more kids!

Follow this link to get my teacher-facing curriculum guide. This is a living document that I adapt every year in real time. You’ll notice that my classes meet three times per week, and my plans reflect that timeframe. Hopefully, this document is flexible enough for more teachers to apply to their own situations.