NSF Awards: 2031455
Building Capacity in Computer Science (CS) Education and Student Near Peer Classroom Mentorship is a research-practice partnership between The Young People’s Project (YPP), Boston Public Schools, Bootstrap, and Boston University. Our project aims to increase the number of computer science teachers by designing, evaluating, and iterating on a professional development model that includes trained “College STEM Literacy Workers” who work alongside teachers in the classrooms. The goal of this project is to provide professional development for BPS teachers that uses a culturally responsive and sustaining classroom model of instruction developed by the Young People’s Project and the Algebra Project which integrates Bootstraps CS curriculum into existing 9th-grade algebra 1 classrooms.
Mary Ann Davis
Wishing you great success in this project and hoping it will eventually be scaled up and brought to districts across the country. The need is overwhelming and you are the right group to be doing the work.
Cliff Freeman
Cliff Freeman
Director of STEM Programs
Thank you for your comment, Mary Ann Davis! Also, happy belated national teacher appreciation day... maybe we should organize for an entire month! Let us know where you teach, maybe we can start thinking about ways to bring some of what we are doing to a community near you!
Kelley Williams
YPP is an exciting program that brings quality STEM education to those without access and to those who need it. Thank you for all the work you do and your commitment to teaching kids STEM and showing them they can do it!
Much love to you all -- keep on pushing
Cliff Freeman
Maisha Moses
Executive Director
Thank you Kelley!
Michael Singletary
Thanks for sharing your story. I would be interested in hearing more about your training and recruiting process. Please let me know. Thanks
Cliff Freeman
Cliff Freeman
Director of STEM Programs
Thank you for your comment Michael. Much of the novelty to our training has to do with embedding three key facilitator competencies into the CS training. Checkout this blog post that describes the three competencies, Accurate Empathy, Conceptual Flexibility, and Cultural Sensitivity https://yppcsforall.org/consultant-and-facilita...
Another layer to this process is the inclusion of college age students as teacher assistances during the school day.
Recruitment, so far, has been through an opt-in kind of fashion. We present the idea to integrate CS into existing math classrooms, and teachers from select schools who find it interesting, we want to work with them. Eventually, we hope teachers begin developing professional learning communities where more capacity to teach CS is built within the teacher ranks... in a similar way to how we position young people to teach other young people math and CS content in their communities.
Roxana Hadad
Associate Director
What an innovative model for promoting student agency while building teacher capacity. I'm curious about the CS college students. Do any of them get an introduction to pedagogy? Is there any structure in place to attempt to lure them to the classroom?
Cliff Freeman
Cliff Freeman
Director of STEM Programs
Hi Roxana, thank you for your comment. Also, thank you for noticing the student agency + teacher capacity building as integral of this project! You ask very good question, as we have some big ideas brewing around this unique role and potential for CS college students impacting public school CS ed. in a major way. Surprisingly enough, we are gearing ourselves up to write about this...we want to write to the Journal of Computer Science Integration. We should defiantly connect soon!
Roxana Hadad
Associate Director
Yes, you should definitely submit something to the JCSI! This is exciting work. Let me know when you want to talk.
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
Hey Roxana!
Roxana Hadad
Associate Director
Hey Eli! :-D This is such a rad project!
Neil Schiavo
Great work! I had heard a bit about YPP but this was a concise and insightful description of the design and goals. I'm curious- is one of the goals of the project to have the college CS students continue into other CS educator positions?
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
Hi Neil,
We don't have specific goals for college students' trajectories. There are some college students at YPP that want to go into STEM careers, some that want to go into teaching careers, and some that are happy to be giving back to their communities but want to pursue careers in law or art or some other vocation that is outside the scope of the content at YPP.
However, we do want to open the field up to the understanding that teaching is also a CS/STEM profession whether that be in classrooms like is happening here or in out of school/informal contexts like happens elsewhere at YPP. This is crucial for expanding participation in STEM and understanding STEM as a relational pursuit.
Jan Cuny
Dir DEIA for Strategy and Operations
Great project! I can imagine that the program will also have an impact on the college students themselves. Have you measured that? I'd imagine that it can be both positive (increases in professional identify, mattering, interest in teaching, etc.) and negative (impact on time needed for their own studies or jobs to supplement their own expenses).
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
Hi Jan,
We are currently in conversation with college students as they finish up the year. We think about impact relationally. That is, we want to explore the impact on relationships that college students are a part of as well as the impact those students have on relationships in the classrooms. One of the things they've learned is that they have to be able to communicate effectively with the classroom teachers as well as the students. Something they have been emphasizing is patience in building relationships with students before the high school students will accept help from them or the college students feel completely comfortable offering advice. Because they have been in multiple classrooms, they have also recognized the different styles teachers have and the ways in which they have to accommodate those styles. For instance, in one class they feel more comfortable giving the teacher suggestions about how to approach the lesson whereas in another they do more to support the teacher's goals without trying to modify it too much. Because they have backgrounds in computer science, they have also been able to think about and make connections between computer science and mathematics and give suggestions about how to modify the curriculum going forward.
Maisha Moses
Executive Director
Hi Jan,
Our experience working with college students over the years is that they do a good job of balancing their academic responsibilities with their YPP activities. Also the college students are paid in this project.
Eden Badertscher
It is really incredible to see your vision in math extend to CS and STEM. The literacy workers that I have had the opportunity to meet and work with (in addition to the incredible YPP staff) at the high school level and college level were such thoughtful and purposeful leaders in their work. These young people contributed to our STELAR project paper coming out (our video includes a quote from the focus group: https://stemforall2022.videohall.com/presentations/2387.html ) and they really challenged our perceptions of the role of technology in leading for equity and cemented my own understanding of and commitment to youth not just as participants in change, but leaders in change. Thank you for this.
Vivian Guilfoy
Maisha Moses
Executive Director
Thank you Eden!
Robin Gottlieb
This looks great!
Robin
Maisha Moses
Executive Director
Hey Robin! Thank You!
Emily McLeod
Director of Teaching and Learning, Code.org
What a great project! I'm wondering if you have any findings yet about the impact of the project on teachers' capacity to teach CS. What's the approach that you are taking to measure that impact? Are there any indications yet that teachers will continue to use the Bootstrap materials in their math classrooms?
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
Hi Emily,
We are interviewing teachers and they participate in professional learning opportunities where we discuss opportunities and tensions. We are learning about the impact on their teaching that way. Currently the district is not allowing researchers in the classrooms for observations. We hope that changes next year. By all indications, teachers plan on continuing the program next year.
Jennifer LaBombard-Daniels
Very creative video! Your grant has so many wonderful and integrated components that not only enrich teachers in understanding a field that was not their chosen field with what can engage students in learning and further their real world tethers. I am wondering how you sustain the learning once you have delivered the content to the teachers. Are their coaches in the buildings that help them when they get stuck?
Eli Tucker-Raymond
Research Associate Professor
Hi Jennifer,
We don't have coaches in the building. We do have a facilitator who is available for help and to observe lessons, although that has been tricky to start this year. The "coaches" are in fact the college students who are in the classrooms weekly. We also have ongoing professional learning meetings throughout the year. The plan is to create cohorts of teachers in the schools so that in a couple years they will be a self-sustaining community supporting each other.