Equity and Access to CS
As a CS educator, the issues related to equity in and access to CS are very real to me. As a middle school teacher, I had classes of 37 students with only 3 girls. Within a year after intentional support from administration and starting a Girls Who Code club, the numbers of girls enrolling in my classes were up and so was my hope that we really could get to the 50/50 mark. With this experience in mind, I submitted a proposal to put together and moderate a panel for the annual convening of Arizona's superintendents, district, and school leaders - Equity and Access to K-12 Computer Science Education. For this panel, I invited Kevin Wang, founder of Microsoft TEALS, a K-12 district representative, Code.org regional partner representative, and a higher education representative from the CS department at University of Arizona. Together, the panel addressed questions related to equity and access to CS education. To start everyone off with an overall understanding of the issue, I showed t...