Mike Zamansky is a very experienced and highly-regarded computer science teacher in New York, and founder (I think?) of the upcoming New York City Academy of Software Engineering (here’s [Joel Spolsky](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2012/01/13.html) on the topic). Imagine, then, my delight at discovering that he’d recently started blogging again.
I love his [latest post](http://cestlaz.blogspot.com/2011/12/my-favorite-student.html) on teaching:
I’ve been thinking a lot about my career as a teacher recently. I decided to leave industry over twenty years ago. As teachers, particularly teachers with technical backgrounds we leave a financially lucrative field to enter one with very few financial rewards. It’s also a field very much under attack, particularly in recent years. […]
So, what do I get out of the deal? Well, when I hear form my graduates, I know that I’ve made a difference. Also, the friendships I’ve developed over the years.
His other pieces are great, too — [thoughts](http://cestlaz.blogspot.com/2012/01/pretty-sneaky-sis.html) (with starter code!) on a software engineering class project that teaches design through implementation, some [reflections](http://cestlaz.blogspot.com/2011/12/ml-and-ai-courses-how-they-were-taught.html) and [suggestions](http://cestlaz.blogspot.com/2011/12/stanford-classes-what-id-do-next.html) on the Stanford profs’ CS classes, and some details of a [lesson module](http://cestlaz.blogspot.com/2011/12/wheres-waldo-text-style.html) he developed to teach 2-D arrays (again, with code). Fantastic.