Effective professional learning communities (PLCs) are important in supporting teacher learning. This study investigated computer science (CS) teacher leaders' perspectives on the lessons and the challenges in supporting CS teachers through local PLCs. We purposefully selected ten CSTA chapters and conducted focus group interviews with the chapter leaders between 2020 and 2022. Our findings indicated that these PLCs offered social-emotional support, continual networking opportunities, and rich professional learning resources. Also, they amplified teachers' voices and supported CS teachers' professional identity building. To engage CS teachers, the teacher leaders built trust, collaborated with other PLCs or organizations, and set an inclusive PLC culture. These PLCs had challenges in recruitment, leadership development and transition and building group identity.

The recent pandemic has resulted in challenges to the prioritization of CS curriculum and strained the structures that support and grow the professional development and identity building of the teachers who implement it. In this poster we examine how local chapters of a national CS teacher advocacy organization (the CSTA) support their members during a time of transition and change. Using focus group data collected from an ongoing multi-year longitudinal research project, we tried to better understand the challenges that these entities faced as their normal structures of communication and outreach were closed off, and how such challenges might affect the perceptions of the role that local chapters play in supporting the continued development of their members, including their identity as CS teachers.

This paper reports a study of CSTA chapter leaders' percep-tions of their chapter's roles in supporting computer science (CS) teachers. Intent on understanding the impact of member-ship in a professional organization on the development of teacher professional identity, our research revealed that in the chapter leaders' perceptions local CSTA chapters had an im-portant role in supporting the development of their mem-bers' professional identity as a CS teacher.