There are only so many people who can say that what they do for a living is their life passion. In Computer Science teacher Tim Harrison’s case, passing on his knowledge of programming to eager students with little to no experience has become one of the greatest joys of his life.
Before coming here, Mr. Harrison worked in the computer industry for about 30 years, jumping from company to company, until he took a five year break and decided to earn the credentials needed to teach math and computer science in schools. He taught Pascal programming language and compiling technology at Texas Woman’s University, a semester computer basics class in the University of North Texas and a year of regular computer science in Pasadena.
“When I first started doing this back in the 70s, I got into computer science because I have a lousy memory,” Harrison said. “I enjoyed the immediate gratification and storage features computers contained, and eventually, they became an integral part of my life.”
For the first four weeks of school, Mr. Harrison’s AP and regular computer science classes worked with pencil and paper on symbols and problem solving before working respectively on Scratch and Java programming. Recently, students have instilled computational thinking concepts and are creating their own programs on their new laptops. Because of limited time in the classroom, he allows his students to take their programming home with assignments.
Mr. Harrison also uses Google Classroom to teach his students, which makes their assignments more convenient. Since he creates assignments online, students can submit their code through Google Classroom, in contrast to the beginning of the year, when they had to email their files.
Mr. Harrison’s days are typically very long. On school days, he works from as early as four in the morning until school starts to prepare his lesson plans. He lives in Hemet in Riverside County with his wife, whom he only sees on the weekends, since he rents a room closer to the school.
Time spent from family and interests is spent to better the computer science course for his students. However, outside of his education passion, Mr. Harrison teaches Scottish Country Dancing. He has hosted classes in Redondo Beach, Redlands and Austin, Texas before.
“That was actually my first teaching credential,” Harrison said. “It took me ten years to get it and I received the certificate from the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society.”
So far, Mr. Harrison has found friends in staff members and students alike. Compared to his previous schools, discipline is not as large of an issue here and overseeing students creating programs has never been more enjoyable.
“Having been a computer scientist for over 30 years, this stuff is second nature to me,” Harrison said. “Knowing what my students don’t know and translating my knowledge is difficult. But the students are interested in what I’m doing here. We’ll eventually get where we need to be.”
TCHS School Newspaper