Rita Sabri

Teaching

I teach computer science and cybersecurity at Cardozo Education Campus, a public school in Washington, DC, and serve as District Computer Science Chair for DC Public Schools.

Classroom

I teach about 100 students a year in three courses: AP Computer Science Principles, PLTW Cybersecurity, and Computer Science Essentials.

  • Browser-only by design. Labs run on a school Chromebook behind a content filter, with no installs, accounts, or API keys.
  • Security inside other subjects. Micro:bit radios teach the CIA triad in physics, Caesar ciphers teach modular arithmetic, and password entropy teaches logarithms.
  • Language support. Materials include Spanish supports for multilingual learners.
  • Real practitioners. Guest speakers from Amazon, Google, and policy think tanks connect class to careers.

District and community

  • 2024–present

    District Computer Science Chair, DC Public Schools

    Modernized legacy computer science and cybersecurity curricula for generative AI, with modules on prompt engineering, evaluating AI tools, and human-centered AI ethics. Trained peer teachers to adopt them and presented the work to more than 50 teachers.

  • 2025–present

    Grants and partnerships

    Boolean Girl teacher grant; grant writing for after-school programs; partnerships with Boolean Girl and DC Water; a high school to community college pathway with Prince George’s Community College.

  • 2026

    NAF Distinguished status

    Earned by Cardozo’s computer science academy, which I lead.

  • 2026–27

    NatsPrep with the Washington Nationals

    Cardozo students meet monthly at Nationals Park and build Python projections of player performance from real data, then present their models to Nationals staff in April.

  • Mar 2027

    DCPS AI Red Team Challenge

    A district-wide AI red-teaming capture-the-flag competition I’m building, hosted at Cardozo.

Earlier teaching

  • 2022–2023

    Teaching Assistant, University of Pennsylvania

    CIS 160 Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science; CIS 1951 iOS Programming

    Led recitations, held office hours, and graded for courses of more than 100 students.

  • 2022–2024

    FIFE After-School Program, Penn Engineering

    Program leader and instructor

    Taught Python and Arduino to more than 135 Philadelphia students, and recruited and trained volunteer instructors.

Tutoring and credentials

Outside school I run CyberScholars, one-on-one and small-group cybersecurity tutoring for middle and high school students in the DC area and online.

I hold a DC OSSE Standard Teaching Credential in computer science and have passed the Praxis Computer Science exam.