ROCHESTER — Like any good computer science teacher, when Sean Riley sees a suspicious email in his inbox, he deletes it.

When he got an email that told him he won an award from Mass Insight, an organization that partners with schools to support K-12 education, he said he “instantly looked at it and said, ‘well that’s probably a phishing spam email.’”

But when he started to hear “congratulations” from students and fellow teachers at Old Colony Regional Vocational Technical High School, he realized he should take another look.

Riley, a third-year teacher at Old Colony, won a Partners in Excellence award from Mass Insight.

The award honors “educators who made a significant impact in increasing academic opportunities for underserved students as measured by their students’ success,” according to Mass Insight. It was given to 15 Advanced Placement teachers in Massachusetts this year.

Advanced Placement classes give students the opportunity to do college-level work while still in high school. Students then take an Advanced Placement test, which, if they pass, can count toward college credits.

In Riley’s Advanced Placement computer science class at Old Colony, he teaches juniors how to use the Java coding language. His other classes focus on other types of programming and
web design.

This was Riley’s first year teaching an Advanced Placement class, he said. Because he’s a newer teacher, Riley encourages his students to “teach me how to teach them, and let me know what’s working for them.”

“Seeing the kids actually learn and grasp [computer science] … is a really cool feeling to be able to give to them,” he said.

According to Riley, he has “always been really interested in computers.” He got a degree in computer science from Bridgewater State University after having already learned a lot about computer programming outside academia.

In his class Riley makes sure the kids are actually coding every day with assignments that are “interesting and relevant to them.”

Riley said he often references “Lord of the Rings” in his assignments because he “happens to be fanatical about Lord of the Rings” and it helps content stick in his students’ minds.

But while Riley said he sees the Mass Insight award as an honor, he thinks his students are the ones really putting in the work.

“My students probably did more work learning than I did teaching,” he said, noting that his students got a strong foundation in coding from fellow Old Colony teacher Susan Soucy.

As a recipient of the Partners in Excellence award, Riley said there’s “a lot of extra stress now.”

“Now somebody sees me as someone worthy of this award … I didn’t think that I was going above and beyond before … Now I’m worried about letting the students down,” he said. “But at the same time, it motivates me."

"Whatever I am doing now … clearly I’m doing something right,” he added.