Dear Parents or Guardians

Okanogan High School has an exciting opportunity to offer computer science next year. We are investing in our students by partnering with Microsoft Philanthropies TEALS to build and grow our CS program. There are more than 500,000 open computer science positions without qualified talent to fill them across all industries. We are trying to help ensure our students have access to the necessary education to ensure a successful future for them.

Microsoft Philanthropies TEALS is a program that recruits, mentors, and places passionate technology professionals into high school classrooms as volunteer instructors. These volunteers bring subject matter expertise and will join me to teach computer science together. TEALS provides training for both parties, rigorous curricula, and opportunities for students to continue their education outside of the classroom.

We are applying to partner with TEALS. If our application is accepted, we will offer Introduction to Computer Science. This class is based on the award-winning University of California Berkeley CS10 course and is adapted specifically for high schools.

As a TEALS partner school, Okanogan High School needs to assist with volunteer recruitment from the computer science and software engineering fields to team-teach these courses with our teachers. Okanogan High School will hold its course first period to permit the volunteers to attend their jobs.

Please help --if you or someone you know works in the computer science or software engineering field and would be interested in making a difference in our students’ future success, please feel free to contact me 509.422.3770. You can read more about TEALS by going to the following website, www.tealsk12.org. In addition, TEALS is running several webinars for prospective volunteers. If you are interested in those, please visit aka.ms/TEALSinfowebinar to sign up!  

I am excited about this opportunity and look forward to hearing from many of you.

Sincerely

Zach Spaet

Business Teacher