My journey into data science began with this question: What is the cursive writing of high school math? I’ve been teaching high school math for the past 13 years. I’ve taught Geometry, Algebra 2, Precalculus, AP Calculus, AP Statistics, and some math electives. As I’ve continued to grow as an educator the more I see the system that we’ve created in education is fiercely broken. The whole point of one institution is to get into another institution. Go from a good elementary to a good middle school to a good high school to a good college then finally “the real world”. High school has become the business of being college prepatory without really questioning, should we be? Should every student desire to get a college degree in order to be able to have a successful life? What are we teaching in high school that is actually obsolete (like the removal of cursive writing from elementary school teaching)? Every math teacher knows that will be asked the question “When will I use this in real life?” - and most of the time the response is some vague application to being able to think critically and problem solve.
And I still believe that is true. However, does every aspect of our curriculum need to be the main track for students? The normal math track is to push as far as you can into Calculus because that will help you get into university. It seems as though our reason for learning something is a means to an end of getting a college acceptance. What if we rather put more emphasis on data analysis and the study of statistics? All of our students are exposed to these concepts and yet do not know how to make sense of them. Along with that, coding is the new “foreign” language that should be emphasized over Spanish, French, etc. Fluency in coding languages open up so many avenues for students to be able to choose careers beyond high school, perhaps without needing to get a 4 year degree.
These thoughts drove me to learn for myself more about data science. The more I learned the more I got excited not just about being able to apply it to my teaching, but to actually be able to impact the world through the skills of a data scientist. I realized that I wanted to pursue a career change. I chose to learn from Flatiron because of their reputation as a bootcamp that prepares you for being able to launch your career, the support they provide for students throughout the process, and finally the flexibility to be able to learn it at my own pace while being employed full time.