Teachers are key stakeholders in addressing the equity gap in CS. This session you will have the opportunity to articulate concrete ways that you can contribute to this effort in your own school.

When thinking about what actions you can take it might be helpful to think about what you are concerned about, what you influence, and what you control. There might be a lot of things you are concerned about (“Students can only choose one elective therefore students with special interests such as art or band do not have the opportunity to take computer science.” or “Some of my students do not have access to computers at home.”), that you cannot really influence. But there are probably things you can influence (“The principal will not allow students with low math scores to take computer science because she is worried students won’t be successful without a strong math background.” or “The girls in my class are less likely to raise their hands to ask or answer questions.”), that you cannot control. And there are things you can control (“My students don’t share their work beyond the walls of my classroom.” or “My students don’t have strategies for debugging when they run into problems with their code.”).

Recruitment is not something that occurs only during the week of enrollment. It is something that you can do all year long. In order to maintain the diversity within our classrooms, we must also pay close attention to the way in which we support diverse learners within our classrooms. As more and more of us make progress in this important work, hopefully we will begin to see progress towards more diverse representation in the field of computer science.

Teachers have a lot to do everyday, it can feel like there is no time to recruit students, but for us to be able to make progress on building an equitable CS program in our buildings, we need to influence and control what we can to make that a reality. The same is true for supporting diverse learners once they find their way into our classrooms.