Teaching Diverse Students with a Lens on Equity in the CS Classroom

This workshop, run by Crystal Hess, is designed to engage critical thinking about how to build a collaborative learning community in the classroom that focuses on advocacy for students from marginalized or underserved populations.

Participants will engage in activities, discussion, and reflection to generate critical thinking about how can they, as educators, act/react to create a safe and equitable learning environment for our students. Participants gain common vocabulary about equity (privilege, bias, and allyship) and participate in discussions about how each of these can effect a student’s ability to engage in learning in the classroom and to feel belonging in to a collaborative learning community (particularly those students you are traditionally underserved or marginalized). Participants will work through example inequity scenarios, discuss solutions with their peers, and practice responses that create a safe and equitable learning experience for their students.

NOTE: Participants will be required to do an hour of pre-work consisting of groundwork for discussions in the sessions including reading supplied articles and completing supplied activities as well as reflecting on those experiences before coming to the workshop.

Participants who complete the pre-work and the 2 hour workshop will be eligible to receive 3 clock hours (sponsored by PSCSTA and the UW Dawgbytes program). Please email csta.pugetsound@gmail.com if you would like to receive clock hours for this event.

Event Schedule:

12:00 - Arrive/socialize (Parking is free on campus after noon)
12:30 - 2:30: Workshop
2:30 - Time to continue discussion or to socialize

About the facilitator: Crystal Hess is a tenure-track Computer Science Instructor at Shoreline Community College. She previously taught both High School and was most recently Program Director at Ada Developers Academy (a coding bootcamp in Seattle for women and gender diverse people). She is most passionate about creating an equitable, safe, and fun learning experience for all students (especially the underserved) in the intro sequence (CS0 and CS1 in particular) and creating communities where people feel supported and connected (both students and educators).