PD for Teachers:
Data Science

Training for Teachers

From June 23-27, 2025, Berkeley Coding Academy is offering professional development for educators with an interest in implementing Data Science lessons or classes. All participants work through our Data Science: The AI Journey curriculum with core units in Python Programming, Data Analytics, and Machine Learning. For the PD training, you will learn the robust curriculum first-hand that we have been teaching to students 12-18 in the Bay Area and beyond. You will become a Python programmer, and a Data Science practitioner, and you will be equipped to teach this content to others. Full digital lessons with 4K videos, annotated coding notebooks, problem sets, and project guidelines are included with the training. No experience is required.

PD Goals

Our goal is to equip teachers with the essential skills and foundations needed to become confident and skilled data science educators. We believe the best way to gain confidence teaching a technical subject is by mastering it firsthand. Throughout this program you will:

  • Learn to code in Python and solve general computer science problems.

  • Analyze big data using descriptive statistics and compelling visualizations.

  • Build and evaluate machine learning models to make predictions from real data.

Additionally, our PD includes discussions and practical recommendations on teaching this material effectively to students.

The Curriculum

Director and founder Corey Wade, has been teaching this curriculum for over 5 years during summers to Berkeley Coding Academy students, and during the school year to Independent Study students. The curriculum is based on his professional experience as an author, teacher, director, presenter, and researcher. The curriculum has been revised for 5+ years based on ongoing student, staff, and editorial feedback. The curriculum is largely focused on machine learning, the Python code behind AI. All students who take the curriculum build machine learning models in Python and make real-world predictions with final projects. Students who have completed the curriculum have majored in Data Science in college, started AI clubs at in high school, won science fairs, obtained Data Science internships, and taken advanced courses in Machine Learning.

What’s Included

Every lesson that we teach live and online during the PD includes a 4K video covering the same content, an annotated coding notebook, and problem sets or project guidelines. Slides are often included. These video lessons are publicly available on YouTube and may be used by your students. You will receive full and permanent access to all digital materials that make up the curriculum. We aim to cover about 70% of the curriculum during our PD. The amount that we cover can be used for a full semester of content. Additional materials will be provided to extend the curriculum for a full year. Our playlists include hundreds of hours of video content that will be useful to you and your students.

Student Feedback

Our Data Science: The AI Journey curriculum has received outstanding feedback from students who have taken it in over the summers at Berkeley Coding Academy. Here is some relevant data from Summer 2024.

Machine Learning Comfort

Curriculum has just been completed.
Q: On a scale of 1-5, how comfortable are you building machine models?
A: The mean (average) score was 4.52

Amount Learned

Q: On a scale of 1-5, how much did you learn throughout this program?
A: The mean (average) score was a 4.90

PD Structure

Participants will rotate throughout the day between interactive lectures where we code together, and cohort time, when you solve problems and work on projects. We will likely split teachers into different cohorts based on your coding background. Those with no experience coding will review fundamentals, and those with more experience coding will go deeper into the material. Four new lessons will be presented each day. You will work toward a final project that tells a data story based on a dataset of your choice.

Certification

Teachers who complete the PD with a final project demonstrating what they have learned will be awarded a Data Science Educators Certificate. Although the certificate is not officially recognized by the Board of Education, it is representative of your accomplishments and may be passed forward to administrators and unions as evidence of a 4-Unit Math, Computer Science, or Data Science training completed.

Next Steps

If you would like more info about our PD before enrolling, consider the following options.