When i decided to host a Women's Sparring Event at my boxing gym, I was hopeful that a handful of women would show up. I have a dream of building up women's boxing in North Carolina. My desire for the event was to share my experience and support women to get some sparring in the ring with other women, or at least come watch and see what it is all about. I was surprised (and a little overwhelmed) at the number of women who came. It was so heartwarming to see and talk to all of the amazing women warriors who were brave enough to show up and share the experience of being in the sport. There were boxers as young as 13 and as old as 65+. There were all experience levels from one brave boxer who had only had two months experience to nationally ranked amateurs and professional fighters. My goal was to give everyone a safe, positive experience and as much time in the ring as they desired. I think it was overall a really positive, but I also learned a lot about making it better for the next time. It is a lot to juggle all of the different personalities and experience levels in boxing. First of all, I learned about different fighters and coaches and what to expect from them and what they need. Of course, the makeup of the fighters who come will always be different, but we had a good turn out from a variety of gyms in the area and I know many will return. I felt a little overwhelmed at which boxers to match up and who should go in with who, but I was glad I was more cautious than not even if some were in the ring more than others. I was grateful to hear from most of the women that said they had a wonderful time connecting with other women and can't wait to do it again. Ashley, one of our boxers said, "It was fun to see all the women encouraging each other...shows how powerful we are as a group even if it's an individual sport." I hope the women and coaches know that I am grateful for each of them for showing up and supporting each other at my event. I will definitely host another event soon as well as work to give the mighty group of women from our gym who show up every week more opportunities to spar and work on their technique. A special shout out to Remy, our gym owner and our coaches Ty, Jon and Allam for supporting the event and helping out to make it such a success.
This winter I had the opportunity to read two powerful works of nonfiction by Dashka Slater, The 57 Bus and Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed. I first heard about the two books when I read Slater's New York Times articles about both events. Reading the articles left me wanting to know more about what had happened with each incident. They both take place in parts of the Bay Area that I know well having spent 7 years there as an educator and college student. Part of the power of these two books is how they are written. Each section of the books is small and looks at the issues from a different lens or person's point of view laying forth a nuanced and thorough telling of events that might otherwise seem cut and dry. The 57 Bus refers to the public bus that two students in Oakland take to school who live very different lives. There is Sasha, a genderqueer teen who attends a small private school called Maybeck High and lives in a middle class neighborhood in the foothills. Then there Richard, an African American teen who attends a large public high school, Oakland High and lives in a rough part of Oakland. They only spend 8 minutes together on the bus, but then in a thoughtless act where Richard lights Sasha's skirt on fire while they sleep on the bus, their lives become intimately intertwined as their families and communities wrangle with what it means to bring justice to the situation. The book is divided into 4 parts: Sasha, Richard, Fire, and Justice. We get to know each teen well and then there is an in depth exploration of the crime and how justice is sought. It is a heartbreaking series of events that ultimately leads to redemption and changed lives for both teens. It is a powerful tale for our time and is a valuable read for teens and their parents.
Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives it Changed is a story that is equally heartbreaking but seems far less resolved in the end. There was no sense that justice was served or that many of the perpetrators ever really were made to fully understand the harm caused. My husband attended Albany High School and I knew of the privileged space it occupied as a teacher who taught at Richmond High School that was 10. miles north and worlds apart. Albany is a town of educated liberals many of whom work for UC Berkeley. The people of Albany pride themselves on being informed and sophisticated in their understanding of race and racism. Albany High has many classes where race is addressed and students have conversations about racism making it all the more shocking that this happened in their community. The posts on the Instagram account were simply awful, but Slater is again able to cut through all the noise and sensationalism of the media and help us understand the complexity of the events and the people who were impacted. Like the 57 Bus, it is told in a series of short pieces focused on peeling back the layers and understanding the context and perspectives of those involved. One of the most thought-provoking pieces in the book is a section titled, Questions of Harm: Were you harmed if your picture wasn't on the account, but your name was? Were you harmed if your picture wasn't on the account, but your race was? Were you harmed if your picture was on the account but you were Asian or white? Were you harmed if you were male? Were you harmed if people said you were on the account but you never saw the post? Were you harmed if your best friends couldn't stop crying? Were you harmed if you once shrugged off the jokes? Were you harmed if everything looks different now? Were you harmed if you decided to forgive? Would you have been harmed if the account had never been hidden? Would you have been harmed if it had never been found? Slater does extensive research to listen and tell the stories of those involved. For each of the teens willing to talk with her, she shares their struggles, hopes and humanity. As she states in the author's notes at the beginning of the book: "True justice requires listening with curiosity and compassion to the human stories behind the headlines. Only then can we begin to repair what's gone wrong and reach for what's right." These two works of fiction are special and offer a place for authentic dialogue around issues of equity and diversity and racism. Slate also has some wonderful resources to help work with these texts: The 57 Bus Discussion Guide Accountable Resource Page
Image by Freepik
As part of my exploration into AI, I was really interested in exploring how AI is being used to do good in the world, so I completed the AI for Good Specialization offered by DeepLearning.AI on Coursera. It is a 3 course specialization that looks at how AI can be used in Public Health, Climate Change and Disaster Management. The courses are taught by Dr. Robert Monarch who uses his deep expertise in AI and also disaster management to explain important concepts related to AI for Good. The definition of AI for Good as Monarch explains is the application of AI to solve some of the biggest problems of the world related to the environment, health, justice and humanitarian action with the goal of using AI to prevent, mitigate or resolve problems affecting human life or the environment. One important principle that Monarch discusses at all stages of AI for Good is the Do No Harm Principle which is the understanding that everyone impacted by the project is left better off. You can tell Monarch cares deeply about ensuring that communities and individuals get the help they need.
The courses look at a range of case studies in the real world ranging from detecting baby's cries to provide medical diagnosis to air quality monitoring, wind and solar power forecasting, biodiversity monitoring, and emergency response translation applications. For each of the case studies Monarch uses the following framework to explore the process practitioners take to develop solutions.
Additionally, there are labs to run AI models in Jupyter notebooks to help participants get a sense of the steps taken in each of the case students to use the data collected and processed through machine learning using predictive AI. We also hear from researchers around the world with spotlights on global organizations like Microsoft for Good and Haiti on the Rise where practitioners explain their research and the impact it is making. Dr. Monarch is a patient host and through the repetition of applying the framework to each of the case studies you really get a sense of the possibility and process for using AI for Good.
image source: https://medium.com/the-ai-education-project/introducing-the-ai-education-project-3c1f1fc31fd2 As I continue my journey exploring AI and its implications for teaching and learning, I spent some time reviewing the curriculum available at The AI Education Project. Their site has free curriculum available for students and educators as well as information for advocates. They have partnered with some of the big tech companies including Google, OpenAI, Microsoft and GitHub and have a mission to create equitable learning experiences that teach foundational AI skills. There are high interest, flexible lessons and activities that range from 5 minute warm ups to a semester long Introductory course. The AI Education Project implements culturally relevant pedagogy and project-based learning as a foundation for their curriculum and the content choices reflect a broad range of topics that teachers of any subject matter can find relevant.
AI Snapshots offer 180 five minute warmups organized by the four core subject areas: English, Math, Science and Social Studies. Each warm-up starts with a slide that asks students a thought-provoking question or design challenge. Then there is a second slide titled: Things You May Have Considered. That helps students and teachers explore the topic more deeply. It's a great way to get students to begin to think about the complexities and impact of AI in various disciplines and aspects of our lives. There are also AI Challenges that students can work through on their own that challenge students in timely tasks such as proving they are smarter than ChatGPT and improving their TikTok algorithm. These are wonderfully engaging independent lessons for curious high schoolers to try. For Computer Science and Technology teachers who are interested in bringing AI into their curriculum, the AI Education Projects offers a Project Dashboard that provides project-based learning on a variety of topics related to AI. One of my favorite projects on the dashboard is The 29 A.Is of Washington D.C. where students follow the journey of individual citizens and see how their lives are impacted by AI. It is a memorable, equity-focused lesson that drives home the problem of bias inherent in AI systems. The Intro to AI course is an incredibly thoughtful and well-designed course that provides foundational skills in AI while having students create their own AI recommendation system using Hugging Face. The course includes lesson plans, a teacher's guide, a slide deck and a student workbook. While this course is recommended for 10 weeks, it could easily be built out to last an entire semester. This course is one of the best examples of culturally relevant pedagogy in the field of computer science that I have seen. It gets students to consider AI in ways that are based in the real world. It has them explore biases inherent in data and gives students ample choice to explore their own interests. Furthermore it provides teachers with explicit guidelines to teach the course in a way that makes it accessible to those who may feel a bit intimidated to teach a course in AI. Finally, the AI Education Project offers live professional development and toolkits for educators and advocates who are interested in getting AI implemented in their classrooms, schools, and districts. The AI Education Project is doing incredible work in the field of equity focused and civic-minded computer science education. I highly recommend it as a place to go to find curriculum and guidelines related to teaching AI.
Image by rawpixel.com on Freepik
I recently read Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma. Foo is a producer for This American Life. She is a woman who was extremely successful and functional despite her childhood abuse and neglect, but then she hit a wall and found she needed to take time off in her thirties to really deal with it and heal herself. This memoir follows her journey to first learn she has complex PTSD and then find a unique path to heal herself from past trauma that haunts her and impacts her behaviors daily.
Foo's parents are first generation Malaysian immigrants who demanded perfection and high performance from their only child. But there was a much darker side underneath this-- two mentally unstable parents who emotionally and physically abused their daughter to the extreme and eventually abandoned her while she was still in high school. It is hard to believe that Foo came out of all that she experienced as a wildly successful media producer. As she put it, "Achievement was my constant...my comfort." She graduated early from college with honors. and landed her first job with the well-regarded NPR radio show, Snap Judgement, But during that time her relationships and personal life were a train wreck and she knew something had to give. She receives the diagnoses of Complex PTSD from her therapist in her thirties. Complex PTSD refers to PTSD when trauma is not just a one time event, but occurs over time. There isn't much research about this condition, but Foo uses her journalistic skills to find out as much as she can about the condition and explores modalities of healing. She first explores her origin story and looks closely at intergenerational trauma in immigrant communities. She goes back to Malaysia to speak to relatives about trauma experienced in the family and to learn more about her mother and father's experience growing up. She visits the immigrant community of her childhood and speaks with classmates and teachers to better understand the pressures of model minority status and to uncover why everyone looked the other way. She tries different types of therapy such as EMDR to get at the emotions behind her trauma. She tries different medications and drugs to explore their impact. She tries yoga and other therapeutic modalities to help her body heal. She analyzes and explores her relationships. Her journey is frustrating, humorous at times and heartbreaking. Ultimately, it is the people she finds that offer the biggest source of healing. .She eventually finds her way to Dr. Jacob Ham who is the director of Childhood Trauma and Resilience at Mt. Sinai. He helps her not just find ways to soothe herself when she feel triggered, but to connect with the deeper wounds of her trauma to understand the why beneath her triggers. Then there is the family of her husband who welcome her into their family and provide her with the loving environment her birth family wasn't able to during her childhood. Foo brings to life the complexity of her unique story of trauma and healing and it is definitely a story of hope, but also a reminder that each journey is so unique and nuanced and demands a high level of attention and years of recovery. Many people who suffer from this kind of trauma don't have access to and never get the help they need. It is my hope that this book will help bring light to mental health struggles that many people have and the need and possibility to heal those who have it.
Image by pikisuperstar on Freepik
I recently read the book, Data Feminism by Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein. It offers an insightful look at the many ways that data science mirrors and replicates social hierarchies and injustices. The book starts with the story of Christine Darden, one of the women known as the “human computers” and her story of fighting against a racist, sexist workplace at NASA’s Langley Research center in the 1970s. Throughout the book, it is important to the authors to ground data science in lived experience. D’Ignazio and Klein offers this definition of data feminism:
“A way of thinking about data, both their uses and their limits, that is informed by direct experience, a commitment to action, and by intersectional feminist thought. The starting point for data feminism is something that goes mostly unacknowledged in data science: power is not equally distributed in the world. Those who wield power are disproportionately elite, straight, white, able-bodied, cisgender men from the Global North. The work of data feminism is first to tune into how standard practices of data science serve to reinforce those existing inequalities and second to use data science to challenge and change the distribution of power. Underlying data feminism is a belief in co-liberation: The idea that oppressive systems of power harm all of us, that they undermine the quality and validity of our work, and that they hinder us from creating true and lasting social impact with data science.”(p. 8) D'Agnazio and Klein do a wonderful job analyzing power (who has it and who doesn’t) in data science with thoughtful, varied examples that start with stories of real lives then move into an analysis of all the ways data is used for or against groups of people. They also highlight inspiring stories of data activists who are reclaiming how data is used, collected, represented and contextualized to give power back to marginalized groups. One particular story that stood out to me was the work of Maria Salguero who has individually documented all of the instances of femicides in Mexico over the past 5 years and provides personal data along with links to news reports about each victim. Prior to her diligent work, the Mexican government did not have a database of femicides making it easy to blame the victims instead of understanding that it reflected a larger societal problem. Another powerful story is a project of technology researcher Kate Crawford and design scholar Vladian Joler called the Anatomy of an AI System (https://anatomyof.ai/). This project involves the creation of a data map representing the complicated production, usage, and recycling process of the Amazon Echo Dot. Along with the map, there is a 9,000 word essay explaining the data map. Not only does the map make visible the elusive workings of an AI system, it includes a contextualized explanation to help viewers really understand its process. It is a powerful way to tell the story of data in AI. Each chapter focuses on one of the seven principles of data feminism: examine power, challenge power, elevate emotion and embodiment, rethink binaries and hierarchies, embrace pluralism, consider context and make labor visible. The book provides an important framework and analysis of bias and injustice in data science. There is much work to be done and it is my hope that more people will begin thinking about data and demand more transparency and equity in the field. The book is available online from MIT Press for free: /data-feminism.mitpress.mit.edu/
Lately, I ‘ve realized that my biggest passion in education is curriculum development. It was always my favorite part of being a teacher- designing the lessons that I would teach to my students. After my first few years of teaching, I landed in a number of roles that truly gave me freedom in designing curriculum that was innovative, impactful and culturally relevant from designing an ELL curriculum and program for high school students to working on a design team to support teachers to build more engaging online courses, to creating a computer science course for girls. I recently applied for a position as a curriculum developer for Facing History & Ourselves. They are a phenomenal organization whose website is a treasure trove for educators interested in helping students become active, reflective citizens in the world.
Facing History & Ourselves has created the following framework, Pedagogical Triangle for Historical and Civic Understanding.
Source: https://www.facinghistory.org/
According to their website:
“We engage the mind, heart, and conscience of adolescents who are in the midst of determining who they are and how they interact with the world. We challenge our students to reflect on and analyze moral questions and dilemmas that arise during the study of history and literature. Our curriculum guides students as they explore human behavior, asking them to consider connections between their own actions and the actions of others. By examining the complexities of being human, we nurture caring and curious adolescents who grow into brave and engaged adults.” The Facing History & Ourselves scope and sequence known as the Facing History Journey starts by having students examine human behaviors, beliefs and attitudes in their own lives. Students are then presented with a historical case study or piece of literature to further explore the complexity of humanity that was dealt with in the beginning. Finally, students do creative or reflective work to explore the implications in our current society studied in the works they explored. I reviewed in depth two powerful curricular units that I found on the website: Power, Agency, and Voice and Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age. Power, Agency, and Voice is an ELA lesson that focuses on helping students explore what it means to have power and agency and then using your voice to exert that agency. It uses two powerful pieces of literature, a short story by Bethany Morrow called “As You Were” and a spoken word poem by Clint Smith titled, "The Danger of Silence" to contrast ways people use and don’t use their voice to exert power and agency. Facing Ferguson: News Literacy in a Digital Age explores the historical case study of the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager and the impact it had on the community in Ferguson, Missouri and the nation. Students begin by deciding on a contract for holding sensitive conversations then move into a discussion about identity and bias followed by an exploration of news reports, journalism and social media. For this unit Facing History recorded interviews with a number of journalists and media experts to help students understand their process and perspective. There are several things that are truly impressive about the units. They are broken down into smaller lessons that can be remixed to create additional lessons for other topics. They are student-centered and provide wonderful discussion questions, handouts and teaching strategies to help frame student discussions and keep students engaged. You can create an account on the website and then save lessons, texts, units and teaching strategies into collections for yourself. You can also download the units into Google Classroom and many of the texts are available in Spanish as well as English. Finally, there is a collection of professional development to support teachers in their journey to use this curriculum. I viewed a wonderful professional development webinar with Clint Smith, the poet, teacher and scholar of one of the lessons I reviewed. It was called, "Working for Justice, Equity and Civic Agency in Our Schools." He discussed the work needed to portray a complete history to young people and what that work looks like. I am excited to refer back to Facing History & Ourselves as a gold standard for how to develop rigorous, timely, engaging curriculum that helps students be conscientious and civic-minded as I look for opportunities to go back to work in this field. My hope is to develop relevant curriculum units that explore the intersection of computer science, digital civics and wellness, social justice and stories. I completed another professional development course on LinkedIn Learning called, Foundations of Accessible Elearning. It was an excellent course that gave practical guidelines for supporting learners with disabilities. The course covered the most common disabilities and provided simple and effective ways to adjust curriculum to meet the needs of learners with those disabilities. It helped to refresh my understanding of important ways to make learning accessible. I was reminded of one of my first assignments in my Master’s program where I had to design a keyboard for a person who was paralyzed below the neck. In one of my last observations at Girls Who Code, I was able to witness a wonderful lesson on Accessibility in Game Design that was created and taught by one of my teaching team’s lead TAs. It was such a well-designed lesson and the students really came away understanding principles of accessibility. The lesson was Barbie-themed. Students were first led through a lesson where they were taught some of the key principles of accessibility and shown examples in game design. They then had to critique examples of poor accessibility design. Finally in groups they were challenge to create Barbie and Ken posters that demonstrated good and bad use of accessibility features. There were four groups total, two were tasked with making a poster with good design and two with bad design. Then the class voted on the best poster. The students had a blast! I tried out LinkedIn premium for a month this summer and one of the most valuable benefits is having access to LinkedIn Learning. The first course I took was called, “Creating Inclusive Learning Experiences” by learning and development expert Naphtali Bryant. Bryant argues that making learning experiences inclusive is a powerful way to invite all members of an organization to the table and make it possible to create ownership and authenticity while building skills for those involved. He uses a framework called INCLUDE that provides a practical approach to identifying key features of inclusive learning. He starts by explaining how best to investigate the needs of learners by focusing on what he calls the 4Ps (patterns, problems, priorities, and pain points). This provides a terrific means for doing a needs analysis and truly reflect on the real reasons your learners need the training. He next focuses on what will nourish learners which involves finding the right mix of activities to keep learners engaged. Then, he reminds us of the power of collaboration and the value of working with multiple stakeholders whose expertise can provide the best possible experience for all learners. He then goes on to underline the value of listening to learners and getting to know them and centering learning around who they are. Uniting learners is at the heart of an inclusive design as Bryant reflects that it is about creating an environment where people can be their full self and feel a sense of belonging. The final two steps in the INCLUDE framework are discovery that emphasizes a learner-centered model and empowerment which refers to providing support to individuals along the way and providing participants with practical takeaways and resources to continue their learning after the training.
Bryant provides lots of practical activities for each part of the framework and it was truly an enlightening model to help make sure the learning experiences you design are inclusive.
Image Credit: https://yestem.org/tools/the-equity-compass/
One of the best professional development experiences I had this summer was taking part in an online course called, Equity in Informal STEM Learning: Using the Equity Compass created by University College London. The Equity Compass is powerful framework for assessing informal STEM learning such as after school clubs, summer camps and programs at museums.
I really appreciated the distinction they made between Equality described as “treating people in the same way, making sure people get the same opportunity” versus Equity described as “factoring in people’s different needs and assets, understanding that people might need different opportunities and support.” The Equity Compass focuses on four main parts: challenging the status quo, working with and valuing minoritized communities, embedding equity and extending equity. As participants of the course, we were introduced to each part of the framework and then presented with case studies to analyze that represented STEM Experiences that were lacking in terms of equity and diversity. We were also challenged to come up with solutions for each of the case studies to make them more equitable by applying our knowledge of each part of the framework. It was a well-designed course that really helped participants understand and apply practices to bringing more equity and diversity into informal STEM experiences. After taking the course, I reflected on the Equity Compass and the work Girls Who Code is doing with their Summer Immersion Program. I can proudly say that it is a powerful example of what informal STEM learning with a focus on equity and diversity looks like. It is truly an honor to be part of this work in getting more girls and students from marginalized communities involved in Computer Science in a way that values their experience. |
AuthorYvonne Caples is a Learning Experience Designer who is passionate about making learning meaningful and engaging for all. Posts
All
|