CS4All Equity
Drawing on pedagogies that recognize that differences should be treated as an asset for teaching and learning, the Equity Team works to build Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education (CR-SE) into CS4All’s core programming. Working collaboratively with academic experts and educators, we explore equity principles and directly apply a CR-SE framework* to CS.
“To be achieved and sustained, equity needs to be thought of as a structural and systemic concept, and not as idealistic.” –NYS-CR-SE framework
NEW EVENTS, RESOURCES
& FEATURED EDUCATORS
& FEATURED EDUCATORS
NEW FEATURED EVENT
2023 Ready for Revolution
CS4All's Ready for Revolution event brought together critical speakers and educators putting philosophy to action. The event celebrates the amazing work completed as part of the Exploring Equity in CS course and is a showcase of CS lessons from EECS participating teachers, and the CS4All community.
NEW RESOURCE
2023-2024 CS Pioneers Calendar!
The purpose of this calendar is to celebrate the accomplishments of past and present computer science pioneers, and specifically to highlight the work done by people from historically excluded groups.
We hope that these pioneers inspire your students and serve to remind them that anyone can be a computer scientist, regardless of race, gender, or (dis)ability.
NEW FEATURED TEACHER
Marisa Laks lesson plan inspires her CS students through Guatemalan patterns
Marisa Laks is a teacher at the High School for Environmental Studies. She has been teaching for 18 years and currently teaches multiple Computer Science classes (from Intro level classes to Data Science to App Development). She currently holds an Advanced Certificate in Computer Science Education from Hunter College.
Ms. Laks participated in MathKind in 2016, traveling to Guatemala for a week with other US teachers to culturally and educationally collaborate with local Guatemalan teachers. While working with both groups of teachers through workshops and other activities at Guatemalan schools, she gained valuable knowledge about teaching strategies that she was able to bring back to her students. She fell in love with the Guatemalan community and the culture so much that she participated in MathKind’s Guatemalan program 3 more times!
Ms. Laks was especially enamored by the beautiful patterns and colors of the traditional clothing that she saw and learned about during her time in Guatemala.
To share her experiences with her CS students, Marisa created a lesson plan where students could apply what they’re learning in the classroom about p5.js, the Bootstrap curriculum, and/or materials from the Mouse Design league to design their own pattern(s). Her students' patterns are inspired by the patterns and motifs sewn or woven into traditional Guatemalan clothing worn by Mayan women. Fueled by her love of computer science and the success of the project, Marisa is committed to developing instruction and creative projects that enable her students to demonstrate different applications of computer science.
If you are interested in learning more about Guatemala or Ms. Laks’ inspiration, please check out “Identity, Community, and Defiance All Woven Into a Blouse (Atlas Obscura).”
NEW FEATURED EVENT
The CS4All Equity Initiative:
Successes, Challenges & What’s Next
Successes, Challenges & What’s Next
Did you miss our Equity Impact Report Release event? Check out the video and download the short report to learn more about our work– including Exploring Equity in CS, a multi-year professional learning intervention.
NEW FEATURED PODCAST
CS4ALL #CSvoices Podcast
To showcase the progress made by the initiative, these podcasts will feature a range of stakeholders who have been positively impacted by the program in various ways. This includes interviews with teachers, students, school administrators, and leaders, parents, and even alumni of the NYC public school system. By sharing their experiences, the podcast aims to provide diverse perspectives on the impact of CS4ALL, the challenges faced in implementing computer science education, and the innovative approaches adopted by the program to overcome these challenges.
Podcast #01 is the first in a series by Felix Alberto.
NEW RESOURCE
Anti-Racist Toolkit & Resources
A very comprehensive list of Anti-Racist Resources, for educators.
The compilation resources are organized by Toolkits, booklists, resources for parents and specific resources for different racial affinity groups. Additionally, this includes list of medical, research and trainings organizations.
NEW FEATURED EDUCATOR LESSON PLAN
PowerOn in NYC Classrooms
Shout out to Kristi Jones, a CS4All NYC Ingenuity Team Member, for sharing her new PowerOn lessons. Check out this new video that walks through her grade 9-12 lesson and provides student work.
This recording is an excerpt from CS4All NYC’s 2022 Ready for Revolution Conference.
NEW RESOURCE
Streaming Access to The Award- winning Film Coded Bias
Shalini Kantayya's Coded Bias is “an exploration into the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini's discovery of racial bias in facial recognition algorithms”.
Fill out this form to request access to the streaming link and password.
If you’ve seen the film, check out the Coded Bias Educational Discussion Guide.