Summary of Northern VA CSTA Chapter Formation Meeting
On January 28, 2012, several interested individuals from K-12,
higher education, industry and the local community met to discuss the formation
of a Northern Virginia Chapter of the Computer Science Teachers Association.
This document captures some of the high-level discussion, goals and next steps
for moving forward with this idea.
Problem Statement: Computing
is everywhere in our modern lives. It is driving commerce and job creation,
innovation in numerous other fields of science, and changing our daily lives.
The discipline of computer science underpins these technological advances. It
is critical that K-12 students gain the skills and knowledge that come from
studying computer science, however, in Northern Virginia, like many other areas
of the country, K-12 computer science is marginalized and students have little
access to courses in this area.
Response: To address
this challenge this group of individuals committed to forming a chapter for the
Computer Science Teachers Association, a globally recognized organization
representing K-12 educators, to build a community of expertise, advocates and
support to strengthen K-12 computer science education in Northern Virginia.
The initial high-level strategic goals of the Chapter would be:
• Develop
an ecosystem of support for K-12 computer science education through creating
awareness and appreciation of what computer science courses can offer with
parents, educators, and policyymakers through building partnership with other
organizations;
• Sharing
information among the chapter members on curriculum, course, pedagogy and
issues (such as policy) within their schools; and,
• Advocating
for reforms of educational policy at the local level issues to both increase
student access.
Scoping of activities and
engagement: The group settled on focusing its activities around engagement
at the public and private high and middle schools. While it did not settle on
targeting a particular audience for activities, many were discussed including,
parents, teachers, policymakers, affiliated organizations (such as the American
Computer Science League), corporations and institutes of higher education
(including two and four year colleges).
The group also felt that the geographic scoping should include
Fairfax, Loudon, Arlington, and Alexandria.
Issues/Areas of Interest: The
group discussed numerous issues summarized below; however, the repeating theme
was the K-12 computer science courses and teachers are often considered an
afterthought. They are electives and not part of the “core” education that
local school officials prioritize. A teacher told her story of the
administration considering her course a business elective and not being allowed
to promote her computer science courses to students without also promoting
numerous other elective business and application courses, which offered less
that her course for giving students the skills and knowledge they need in the
21st century. Variations of this same story can be repeated in numerous school
districts. Other specific issues/areas of interest for the group:
• Articulation
-- understanding how we can better articulate course and curriculum between the
high school, community college, and four year college/university systems
• Understanding
where computer science should fit -- ensuring that computer science “counts” as
a core academic subject within the local school
• Gender/underrepresented
minorities -- exposing more women and underrepresented minorities to computer
science education
• Certification/Professional
Development -- ensuring that teachers have the appropriate certification from
the state and adequate professional development
• Dual
enrollment -- looking at ways students can get both higher education and
secondary education credits for K-12 computer science courses
• Measurable
objectives -- understanding the metrics that the chapter can build and measure
its progress against (such as how many computer science course there are in the
target area, how many teachers, how many students)
• Building
Partnerships and Awareness -- reaching out to organizations such as parent
groups, business, and other “STEM” education groups around awareness and
messaging for computer science education
• Awareness
that computing is not just programming – look for other ways to increase enrollments
by bringing to light the many facets of CS, not just programming.
Action Items:
-- Next meeting will be mid-April time frame
-- The following members agreed to be leaders of the Chapter:
-- President:
Ann Drobnis
-- Vice
President: Kathleen Riley
-- Secretary:
Diane Murphy
-- Treasurer:
Pearl Wang
-- Parent Liaison:
Roshan Thomas
-- Student
Liaison:
-- Ann Drobins will take the volunteer information and set up a
mailing list as well as complete the chapter documents that CSTA would need to
approve to authorize a chapter.
Attended the meeting:
Cameron Wilson, Mark Snyder, Annie Hui, Tanes Kanchanawanchai,
Florin Cuc, Kammy Sanghera, Steve Rose, Debra Curran, Timothy Seaman, Diane
Murphy, Michael Stueben, Pearl Wang, Kathleen Riley, Roshan Thomas
Next meeting will be in April or May (with a Doodle Poll to
determine)
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