Why we built a lesson plan library that anyone can use
A common failure mode in professional development is the gap between what teachers learn in a workshop and what they actually do in their classrooms on Monday morning. We have watched this play out across dozens of PD programs over 15 years. Teachers leave energized. They mean to implement. Life happens. The materials stay in the binder.
CxEdHub — available at cxedhub.com — exists to close that gap.
What it is
CxEdHub is a public, searchable library of over 411 computing-infused lesson plans created by K-12 teachers for K-12 teachers. The lessons span every core subject area — from computer science and mathematics to reading, social studies, art, and physical education — and are tagged by grade band, computing concept, applicable standard (CSTA, ISTE, NGSS, CCSS), and instructional approach.
The library is not a textbook. It is not a curriculum package sold by a vendor. Every lesson was written by a practicing teacher who participated in one of our professional development programs — including WySLICE, WySTACK, and GenCyber — and field-tested it in their own classroom before contributing it to the collection.
Why teachers create the lessons
The design decision to have teachers author the lessons — rather than handing them a pre-built curriculum — is the most important thing about CxEdHub.
When a PD program gives teachers a finished lesson, the implicit message is: we designed it, you deliver it. The teacher becomes a vehicle for someone else’s instructional vision. That model has a ceiling. It works for compliance. It does not work for ownership.
Our model inverts the relationship. Teachers arrive at a workshop, learn a computing concept through hands-on exploration (building, testing, iterating in groups of three or more), and then design a lesson that integrates that concept into their existing subject area and grade level. The lesson is theirs. They built it. They understand why every piece is there. And when they teach it — often during the academic year follow-up — they can adapt it because they understand the underlying design logic.
CxEdHub is where those lessons live after the workshop ends. The library gives them a second life — available to any educator, anywhere, at no cost.
What the numbers tell us
The distribution of lessons across subject areas tells a story about what CS integration actually looks like in practice. Of the 411+ lessons currently in the library, 384 are tagged to computer science standards — but 155 are also tagged to science, 103 to reading and language arts, and 87 to mathematics. Art, social studies, library media, and career and technical education are all represented.
This is what integration means. Not “CS as a separate class” but “CS woven into the subjects teachers already teach.” A sixth-grade social studies teacher building a lesson on civilizations that uses data collection and computational modeling. A kindergarten teacher creating a reading activity with a micro:bit component. A high school agriculture teacher connecting cybersecurity to precision farming.
The most heavily used tags beyond CS itself are micro:bit (144 lessons), data collection (113), cybersecurity (70), and WySTACK (70). These reflect the specific hardware platforms and program contexts that generated the most teacher-authored content — and they are the areas where hands-on, physical computing intersects most naturally with existing curricula.
What it taught us
Building CxEdHub taught us three things that now shape every PD engagement we design.
First, teachers will create and share high-quality resources if the PD gives them time to do it. The workshops that produced the most CxEdHub contributions were the ones that allocated at least a full day to lesson design, peer review, and revision. Rushing the creation step undermines the entire model.
Second, searchability matters more than volume. A library of 500 lessons is useless if a fourth-grade math teacher cannot find what she needs in under two minutes. The multi-axis filtering on CxEdHub — by subject, computing concept, standard, and tool — was not an afterthought. It was a design requirement from the start.
Third, a public library changes the conversation with administrators. When a district leader can visit cxedhub.com, filter by grade band and standard, and see 30 ready-to-use lessons created by practicing teachers — not by a vendor — the argument for investing in teacher PD becomes concrete. The library is the evidence.
Use it
CxEdHub is free and open. Browse it, use it, adapt what you find. If you want to build something similar for your district — or if you want your teachers creating lessons like these — that is the work we do.