computer science meets social justice

At the beginning of the school year, I set up a shelf with resources about my two passions:  technology and social justice. I didn't really know how the two were related, but I knew I wanted to bring them together.  I learned how they were related at the K12 Computing Teachers Workshop that was part of the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.  What I learned is that there is a crisis in computer science education both in quality and access.  The result of this crisis is that women and minorities are missing opportunities to advance academically and economically in a field whose employment potential far exceeds the number of students preparing for it.  Also, if we don't get more diverse participation in technology, then we miss out on innovations that are relevant and usable by a wider range of people and end up instead with technological machismo (and more first-person shooter games).

Things really haven't changed much since I first started in the CS field

• Girls and minorities are not represented in the CS field.  This still baffles me, but it was reiterated again and again by industry (google, yahoo, microsoft) and academia (stanford, duke, mit)
• Many kids are not being exposed to programming until college.
• AP CS is not a required course in high school and sometimes AP CS courses are not accepted by colleges.
• School administrations don't understand what CS really means, often equate to applications (word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, keyboarding)
• There are way more CS jobs available than students studying CS.
• There is a bill in Congress (Computer Science Education Act of 2010) geared to addressing this crisis.

Girls wait later to make a decision about their major, 

but decide earlier what they don't want to do

• By age 13 girls determine a positive or negative attitude towards subjects like technology (I did this by deciding I certainly didn't want to be a teacher when I was a teenager and changing my major from math to CS once I was exposed to programming).
• Girls often associate technology with white, nerdy, boring men.
• The impostor syndrome is a real problem for women at every age and occupation, but especially for women who find themselves in male-dominated fields.

Relationships are still key

• I met amazing people and learned about resources that have helped re-ignite my passions for technology and social justice.  
• Technology teachers like myself who are just trying to reach and teach students as much as we can about technology with little direction and funds.  
• CS professors from major universities who are so passionate about their field, willing to listen to the struggles of K12 teachers and provide their support.
• People from industry who seem to be willing to fund almost any worthwhile project, if only we could get hooked up.

Online Resources:

• Computer Science Education Week @ http://www.csedweek.org/
• Computer Science Teachers Association @ http://csta.acm.org/
• Computer Science Unplugged @ http://csunplugged.org/
• Digital Citizens @ http://www.digizen.org/
• Dot Diva @ http://dotdiva.org/
• Education e-Village @ http://techbridgeworld.org/evillage/
• Eric Roberts @ http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/
• EtoysIllinois @ http://etoysillinois.org/index
• Karel the Robot in Scratch @ http://code.google.com/p/scratch-karel/
• Learning to Program with Alice @ http://www.aliceprogramming.net/ (I found out at the workshop that there is a username and password that Steve Cooper (coopers@cs.stanford.edu) will share with teachers if you ask)
• MATHmaniaCS @ http://www.mathmaniacs.org/
• Mrs. Prescott's Computer Literacy Class @ http://teacherweb.com/NE/SchuylerGradeWW/DPrescott/wscal1.aspx
• National Lab Day @ http://www.nationallabday.org/

Other Resources:

• A Clean Slate Approach to High School CS by Jan Cuny
• ACM K-12 CS Model Curriculum, 2nd Edition
• Computer Science Education Act of 2010
• Exploring Computer Science Curriculum 3.0 (really interesting CS curriculum based on social relevancy)
• Let's Fight It Together (movie about cyberbullying)
• Impostor Syndrome Panel Presentation by Katie Siek
• Odd Girl Out (movie about bullying)
• Rising Above the Gathering Storm Revisited
• Running on Empty (a paper coming soon about the state of CS by state)
• Stuck in the Shallow End
• The Power of Abstraction by Barbara Liskov

loser

My favorite new song is The High Road by Broken Bells, especially the refrain:

it's too late to change your mind;

you let loss, be your guide

At first, it seems like a pretty negative sentiment and being ruled by loss can certainly be a sad fate. I've been thinking about loss a lot lately. My weekend's experience of loss was pretty superficial, but when I thought I had lost the diamond from my engagement ring, I cursed its very existence for making me feel so bad for losing it.

Frankly, I am terrified of loss, but when I read Philippians 3:8 - "More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ..." (NSRV) - it seems that I am to let loss be my guide.  I know loss is inevitable and it started the moment I was born, but I'm still in denial and for some reason prefer living in a state of fear instead of acceptance.

So I've been thinking about things I've lost or will lose or should lose:

childhood is lost to time

virginity to fate

memory betrays me

everything can't wait

the future is not secure

diamonds not forever

jobs will come and health will go

everything will wither

promises are broken

trust can be misplaced

arguments will not prevail

everything's a waste

expectations bind me
disappointments haunt

can I find in this world
everything I want

choices all around me

the high road has a cost

following the Jesus way

everything is lost

are we there yet?

"Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.' " - John 21:18

I've been thinking about this verse a lot since last summer when I heard it in the context of a Renovare conference session titled - Where you do not wish to go: discerning and yielding to God's guidance.  It hit home on a personal level early this year with my brother's health.  This theme of control vs. surrender was revisited in worship this past weekend.  I also met someone last week who shared her poetry with me and it inspired me to try some verse again. 

are you there yet
where you do not wish to go

did you arrive without a plan
or did your plans go awry
did you think you could avoid it
walk around it, sneak on by

is there illness in the family
did the homeless go away
are children starving anywhere
did you eat your fill today

is there justice in your city
are the bullies loud and mean
do people die for no good cause
is your drinking water clean

we are there now, don't you see it
where we do not wish to be
that's exactly where we'll stay
until we learn to be set free

where we do not wish to go
is a place we all avoid
instead we build up walls of fear
as our purpose is destroyed

can we banish pain and sorrow
with instincts of flight or fight
or should we face reality
and begin to search for light

illuminate the darkest hour
with thought and word and deed
doing justice, walking humbly
making kindness our new creed

be still, stay calm, hold fast, judge not
believe in a better way
lose pride and immerse yourself
sending out your love today

forgiveness and acceptance
turning enemy to friend
fear not, for I am with you
until the bittersweet end

 

(updated 9/29/10 for submission to First Amendment Writes poetry contest)

lost thoughts

I really liked the finale. I've been a "fan" of Lost since the beginning. There were definitely times when all the twists, turns and answers that turned into more questions really irked me, but I couldn't help watching just one more episode (and then another...). For me the series mirrored humanities fascination with trying to solve life's mysteries with science, philosophy, religion or brute force, but in the end, it all comes down to "why am I here?", which is still the greatest mystery of all.

Lost answered this question through Jack's dad - "Nobody does it alone, Jack. You needed all of them and they needed you." That's still an answer that leads to more questions, but I can live with that.

Other post-Lost musings @ The LOST Recap and Making sense of LOST.

why church?

I just finished reading a friend's manuscript called "Why God?". In his book, Bob McAdams leads his readers on a quest to sift through our common human experiences of reason, truth, good and evil, time, and beauty to "gather from this richness some new thoughts about the reasons for belief and non-belief in God."

It was while I reading his chapter titled, "the shoe that does not fit", that I recognized I was on yet another quest.

"Our cosmology, the etched and stained transparent dome through which we view the universe, like every other part of our lives is in motion. Within our cosmology, our roles require that we constantly ask and answer the question, “What shall I do next?” What happens to a cosmology that is itself in motion? Can a cosmology also be subject to this same ‘what next’ question? Do we outgrow a cosmology in the same way we outgrow shoes? Can a cosmology simply not fit, simply give us daily, constant pain that forces us to face the options of holding on and suffering or letting go of the cosmology itself?"

The cosmology that I am struggling with, against, and often simultaneously for, is no longer why God?, it's why church? What is next for the church as an idea and for church as the reality that I participate in weekly?  Coincidentally, I've stumbled across lots of interesting quotes about church this week.

"Church should only be about comfort for the sick, the dying, the grieving, and the oppressed. Everybody else--buck up and change the world." - Diana Butler Bass

"it’s about the people, people. not the programs. not the banner-waving on others’ behalf. not the countless other things that can seem important but take away from what was at the essence of Jesus’ message & incarnation–love people. love people. love people." - kathy escobar

"After all, the church is relatively irrelevant as it stands in most other parts of today’s social fabric, meaning, the church won’t receive any congratulation except from itself." - Deacon Hall

"Jesus as somehow a window on God; Jesus as somehow a norm that transcends ideas, ideals, and principles but also serves as a standard for them; Jesus as somehow a living reality who confronts as often as he comforts. Christians don't need – indeed perhaps would be better off without – the traditional ways of trying to express these matters and the traditional confidence that their doctrinal assertions can actually contain the full truth of these matters. The truly hard intellectual work for disciples of Jesus today is to re-express our relationship with Jesus and our glimpses of God by re-contextualizing them into a far less complete and confident frame of reference." - Tom Wilkens

"The clergyman and the layman - who together form God's mission people - definitely have a different function in it. Permit me to put it in this somewhat schematic way: the minister must take care of the continuity, he guards the tradition; he must preserve and may easily be a bit conservative. The layman, on the other hand, takes care of the progressive movement, thrusts himself into the actualities of life; he must develop and build.

Both these functions belong together. It is good not only when there is harmony between them but there remains some tension as well. We must not sound the alarm when the layman can hardly stand the church any longer. That does not have to imply that he looks down upon everything as it is being done. It can also mean that the layman understands his function well and for this reason goes into loyal opposition. We are mortally afraid of those tensions and write church papers full about them, but that does not strike me as a cause for concern. Concerned we must become when the laity meekly walk in step behind the preacher. Then they have lost their function. Because then it becomes apparent that they have moved from the world into the church, and it belongs to the grandeur and misery of the layman that he experiences his membership in the church in an extra-ecclesiastical way." - The Church Inside Out by J.C. Hoekendijk