#BlackLivesMatter
What does that mean to us – individually and as a collective? How do we truly embody and engage with this fundamentally human ask to ensure that we end centuries of systemic oppression and racism—both overt and covert? All of us, I believe, are doing some deep soul-searching. Academia is, and so is the CS Education community (see this and this). (My Indian American friends and I have also engaged in long, deep, honest, hold-mirror-to-our-face kind of conversations in our Whatsapp groups). We have had some honest exchanges—with authentic voices—on the SIGCSE mailing list. They were long overdue! But how come we didn’t know of Nicki Washington’s SIGCSE paper—When Twice as Good Isn’t Enough: The Case for Cultural Competence in Computing that we are now sharing with gusto? When CS Ed scholars active on social media choose to share others’ papers before/during/after a conference (thus amplifying readership/awareness), why don’t we come across papers like Nicki’s on social media? We all need to take a long hard look at the various ways in which we amplify (and conversely also sideline) certain scholarship and why that is so.
Today is a red-letter day for me— a 300+ page handbook for K-12 CS teachers on teaching programming (on which l spent upwards of 2000 hours over the last ~2 years…after 7 years of the idea brewing in my head) is finally in print.
But a blog post dedicated to the book (that was in the works) is going to have to wait.
What I will share today instead, is related, but much more pertinent to the issue at hand. Over the course of collaborating with 40 contributors and co-authors on the 26 (A-to-Z) chapters, I learned the most from my BIPOC (Black/Indigenous People of Color) sisters who authored Chapter 12 of the handbook on Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) for Intro CS/Programming classrooms. I am so thankful to Tia Madkins, Jakita O. Thomas, Jessica Solyom, Joanna Goode and, my dear friend, Frieda McAlear (as well as Yolanda Rankin, Allison Scott, Kimberly Scott, Jean Ryoo, and Alexis Martin, who helped shape the article). They lay it out quite simply, plainly, and compellingly with concrete examples for the classroom. The article educated me on so many aspects of CRP, including ideas for how we can make CS culturally relevant for Native Americans and Indigenous tribes, an underrepresented group that barely features in our conversations of #CSForAll. (Thank you, Frieda and Jessi, for being much-needed voices for this forgotten community!) I realized that when we talk about “learner-centered” in CS, it has to essentially be about CRP. (Check out Yolanda Rankin and Jakita Thomas’s research – Leveraging food to achieve 100% retention in an intro CS course.) I was led to articles authored by Gayle Nicholls-Ali on the CSForAllTeachers forum. Most of all, I learned that there was so much I did not know.
So, what can we do TODAY? We all want to take some action, do better. Combating systemic and societal stereotypes and mindsets will be a long, hard road. Amongst the many suggestions/readings being shared, I’d like to add a few easy doable steps that go beyond talk, that I have taken (some in recent months/years and some in recent days)—
- Follow and engage with the work of many of the amazing women mentioned above on the Women of Color in Computing Research Collaborative and the Kapor Center/Level Playing Field Institute.
- Engage with and follow the work of other similar organizations dedicated to fighting racial injustice in CS such as the Constellations Center for Equity in Computing at Georgia Tech (led by Kamau Bobb—one of the most compelling voices on this issue in the CS Ed Community, Lien Diaz, and Charles Isbell, Jr.) and NCWIT. Use the resources they share in your research.
- Learn from and share articles and papers by the Black (and BIPOC) community in CS Ed. Amplify their work!
- Collaborate with BIPOC colleagues on research, papers, books, conference panels, symposia..
- Follow BIPOC CS Ed scholars and CS educators on Twitter and social media and amplify their voices and work and message. Here are the twitter handles for the scholars mentioned in this article (and others) who you could start following today! @ProfTiaMadkins @britannaka @dr_nickiw @Friedamca @joannagoode13 @alexistmartin @kamaubobb @Lien_Diaz @isbellHFh @ShanaVWhite @6Gems @CisforCarla @aleatahubbard @BrendaDardenW @dkkariuki @csdoctorsister @cheryldseals @JDBurge @robotsmarts @cswanier @DrBrittJay @jovialjoy @drabigailjoseph
In simplespeak: AMPLIFY the work of BIPOC scholars!