EECS Affinity Groups
WHAT ARE EECS AFFINITY GROUPS?
CS4All NYC Exploring Equity in CS Level 2, 3 and 4 Affinity group sessions are delivered in bi-weekly, live thirty to sixty-minute interactive learning sessions conducted online in Zoom. Affinity sessions build on the skills and strategies introduced in prior EECS work and provides educators with tailored spaces to collaboratively and explicitly work within racial/ethnic groupings to foster deep reflection and accountability. Educators in these groups critically examine ideological, internalized, interpersonal and institutional oppression and advantage.
All Groups Operate With These Values
We empower each other to do the hard work of systems change and advocacy in these groups.
We practice mindfulness. Mindfulness, the exchange of ideas and resources and the encouragement given by peers in each group, are essential components of our work together.
We acknowledge that equity work that is not grounded in anti-racism is insufficient. We center our work around anti-racist principles.
We assume good intentions of each other, our schools and students.
We "don't let perfect be the enemy of the good" in complex conversation.
We "keep it real" and tell the truth of our experiences to grow toward equity.
We challenge our assumptions and are willing to widen our perspectives.
CS4All NYC’s Black Affinity Sessions
Adjunct Professor and Cognitive Behavior Therapist, Dr. Lloyd Talley facilitates CS4All NYC’s Black Affinity Sessions. In this space, self-identified Black educators affirm experience, explore understanding and seek knowledge in community. Participants will:
Ground teaching practice in critical love.
Participate in efforts toward collective liberation
Share skills and strategies to promote and support mental health for ourselves, our colleagues and our CS equity practice
Explore contemporary issues in CS equity, social justice and leadership
Pursue ongoing social and cultural competence in equity issues
CS4All NYC’s Asian American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, North African Affinity Sessions.
Administrator and Activist Lily Ho facilitates CS4All NYC’s Asian American, Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern, North African Affinity Sessions. In these sessions, participants will:
Explore the sociopolitical history of AAPI race relations in the United States and how this impacts AAPI children/educators.
Hold space for frank, vulnerable conversations around racism as AAPI educators.
Heal through collective experiences and action by learning and creating strategic dialogue to lift AAPI voices in the workplace.
Network and foster community to develop AAPI capacity for liberatory pedagogies through shared access, experiences and resources.
CS4All NYC’s Latinx Affinity Sessions
Ethnic Studies educator and Scholar-Activist Wendy Barrales facilitates CS4All NYC’s Latinx Affinity Sessions. Self-identified participants will:
Create a space to share our lived experiences as people within the Latinx diaspora, where we feel a deep level of care and affirmation
Explore the complexity of the Latinx experience by unpacking anti-Blackness, anti-Indigenity, and colonial history
Build a community centered on growing our critical consciousness through an intersectional lens
Share and create practice to be changemakers, accomplices, and stand in solidarity with other BIPOC educators in our work toward liberation
CS4All NYC’s White Affinity Sessions
Author and Researcher Dr. Elizabeth Bishop runs CS4All NYC’s White Affinity Sessions. The CS4ALL White Anti-Racist Affinity Group is a space for white-identified educators to work to undo racism in our schools and ourselves as we continually commit to equity work. Participants hold themselves accountable to the wider CS4ALL EECS community.
Participants actively engage in:
discussions about race and whiteness
learning about racism and intersectionality
centering inquiry to deepen our understanding
developing language strategies to engage equity work
sharing and listening to stories to reflect and grow
identifying actions we can take to support all our students
identifying instructional and curricular approaches to equity
supporting each other in confronting and working to undo racism in our schools, in our lives and the larger world.
Facilitators of the EECS Affinity Group
Wendy Barrales
Wendy is an Ethnic Studies educator, scholar-activist, and founder of the Women of Color Archive (WOCArchive). As a first-gen Chicana and daughter of formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants, Wendy works to center her family's stories in her research, community organizing, & classroom. She has 10+ years of experience as a public school educator, working predominantly with young women & gender expansive youth of color in Los Angeles, the Bronx and Brooklyn with a focus on the power of storytelling through art. She is also part of the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), where she has co-facilitated annual Inquiry to Action Groups (ItAGs) where teacher study groups engage in one topic of interest and develop action projects. She is currently a Doctoral Candidate in the Urban Education program at The CUNY Graduate Center where her work explores the intersections of gender and race within an arts based WOC centered high school Ethnic Studies course.
Dr. Elizabeth Bishop
Dr. Elizabeth Bishop is an educator, researcher and youth advocate who has served in teaching and leadership roles across K-12, higher education and community-based organizations for more than 15 years. She teaches on the faculty at CUNY SPS Youth Studies and the faculty of Urban Education at the CUNY Graduate Center. Dr. Bishop is the author of two books, Becoming Activist: Critical Literacy and Youth Organizing (2015) and Embodying Theory: Epistemology Aesthetics and Resistance (2018) and has been featured in articles on youth voters in Good Morning America Digital, PBS NewsHour, Business Insider and PolitiFact. Find her online @DrBishopDigital
Lily Ho
Lily is a first generation Chinese American who grew up in NYC, and went through the NYC DOE school system. Passionate about public education and the powerful agency it gives to immigrants and children of immigrants like her own family, she returned to serve in the education system. Lily taught for 14 years in special education, computer science and now serves as an administrator. Her work focuses on prioritizing student equity in education by design and creating structures to illuminate all voices. She is an Amazon Future Engineers BootUp District Instructional Coach, and CS4ALL Ingenuity Equity Lead Educator. Lily serves on the Content Advisory Panel for NYS Education Department's Computer Science and Digital Fluency Standards. Lily has presented on culturally responsive project-based learning at the 2020 Wonder Workshop International STEAM Summit, Georgia Tech's 2021 Constellations' Summit, and culturally responsive student leadership at CSTA's 2021 Conference.
Lloyd M. Talley, PhD
Lloyd M. Talley (Ph.D.) is the Principal Consultant of DiversFYI consulting, a developmental psychologist, educational researcher and diversity trainer. Dr. Talley is an affiliate of the Racial Empowerment Collaborative at PennGSE, a research and training center which develops and implements behavioral interventions to improve families, youth, and organizational Racial Literacy. He is also the primary investigator and interventionist of the Teachers’ Empowerment, Networking, and Development (TEND) Program, a ten-session teacher empowerment, racial literacy, and professional development intervention for The NYC Department of Education through the New York City Men Teach initiative. As a diversity expert he has 12 years of experience in strategy and program design in diverse communities and fifteen years of teaching and training experience in culturally-relevant education and assessment in schools and communities.
Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz
Dr. Sealey-Ruiz is an award-winning Associate Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research focuses on racial literacy in teacher education, Black girl literacies, and Black and Latinx male high school students. A sought-after speaker on issues of race, culturally responsive pedagogy, and diversity, Sealey-Ruiz works with K-12 and higher education school communities to increase their racial literacy knowledge and move toward more equitable school experiences for their Black and Latinx students. Sealey-Ruiz appeared in Spike Lee’s “2 Fists Up: We Gon’ Be Alright”, a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement and the campus protests at Mizzou. She recently co-authored book [with Dr. Detra Price-Dennis] Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Toward Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces.
Chezare A. Warren, PhD
Dr. Warren is the Associate Professor of Equity & Inclusion in Education Policy at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development. He is a scholar of race and intersectional justice with interests in understanding the conditions that enable Black boys’ education success. A former secondary math teacher and school administrator from Chicago, Dr. Warren is recipient of numerous national recognitions for his scholarship including the 2018 American Educational Research Association “Teaching and Teacher Education” Early Career Award. Author of Centering Possibility in Black Education (Teachers College Press, 2021) and the award-winning Urban Preparation: Young Black Men Moving from Chicago’s South Side to Success in Higher Education (Harvard Education Press, 2017), Dr. Warren has written more than 35 articles, reports, and book chapters. He is a widely sought after consultant on issues of education equity, and has held visiting faculty appointments at Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, and New York University. For more information, visit www.chezarewarren.com.
