It’s 12:09 p.m. at Buena Vista Horace Mann school in San Francisco’s Mission district.
Laura Ramirez, a curriculum technology integration specialist, is waiting for 14 girls to stream into her classroom. She’s laid out old Dell CPUs alongside tool kits that contain screwdrivers, Allen wrenches, and pliers. The girls’ job today is to carefully open the computers, explore and label the components, and then put the hardware back together again.
The girls, who are in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade, arrive and place their backpacks into cubbies. They’re here for Tech Chicxs, a club Ramirez founded to encourage girls at the K-8 school to explore science, technology, engineering, and math. Approximately 80 percent of the school’s students are Hispanic or Latino, and Ramirez is particularly set on engaging girls who are rarely represented in Silicon Valley and the broader tech industry.
“My heart is devoted for students to get the tech skills, take the risks, learn computer science at a very young age …. and not be consumed with failing,” she says. “I thought it was important to create a group where our brown girls, and [all] girls, can be fierce at trying new things in technology. That’s my mission.”
You could walk into this club and mistakenly think it’s the personification of “you can’t be what you can’t see,” an upbeat slogan popularized by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, meant to inspire girls who felt like Silicon Valley’s dreams and ambitions weren’t for them to pursue.
But what happens in Tech Chicxs is far more complex than giving these girls the proverbial pat on the back when they code something. Instead, it’s the grueling, rewarding work of helping students develop not just technical skills but also character traits like leadership and resilience — and it’s happening all across the San Francisco Unified School District.
SFUSD is the first large district in the nation to attempt offering computer science classes to every student grades kindergarten through eight, a benchmark it plans to reach in 2020. Nearly half of the district’s 54,000 students are participating in computer science courses this academic year. If the district’s efforts are successful at engaging girls and students from underrepresented backgrounds while providing a pathway for them to pursue STEM in college or the workforce, it could yield one antidote to tech’s infamous diversity problem.
from Just News Viral http://bit.ly/2Gj3vhT
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