U.S. Senator Patty Murray paid a visit to Chief Sealth International High School on Nov. 1 to take a look at the work being done by students in the TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in School) Software Engineering program at the school.

The TEALS program is helping provide high-quality computer science education to students in public schools in Seattle and the state. The program itself isn't new, but Murray's interest is in the newly-passed Every Student Succeeds Act that she wrote with her Republican counterpart (the nation's new K-12 law) which provides new support for TEALS. Murray said, "it's quite impressive", as she took time to look at a series of student developed programs.

TEALS (Technology Education and Literacy in Schools) helps high schools build sustainable computer science programs by pairing trained computer science professionals – from across the tech industry – with classroom teachers to team-teach computer science in high schools throughout the US. TEALS volunteers and partner teachers create a ripple effect, impacting the students they teach, and the many students who will study CS in the future. Started in 2009 by Microsoft employee Kevin Wang who developed and ran the program in his spare time, TEALS was embraced and adopted by Microsoft in 2011. Wang was on hand for Murray's visit.

TEALS partners with 71 schools and 260 volunteers in Washington state, including volunteers from Amazon, Microsoft, Tableau, and Zillow, each contributing about 250 hours a year. In addition to providing volunteers, Microsoft pays the school or PTA $25 per volunteer hour through its employee giving program.