question for all of you how many here by
show of hands studied biology and high
school quite a few of you how many of
you are biologists today not as many I’m
going to revisit that thought a little
bit later for now I want to explore a
possible solution to a problem that’s
impacting all of us you see I believe
that computer science education should
be taught to all students from
kindergarten through 12th grade and I
believe that we need to extend these
opportunities to our most disadvantaged
youth first those who live in
communities where the majority of
residents identify as people of color
living at or below the poverty line I
believe that computer science education
can be a great equalizer now when I
first started thinking about this talk
the Charlotte that we lived in looked
much different in fact just a few short
months ago US News and World Report
ranked our city the 15th best place to
live in the country a melting pot that
I’ve told friends that the recent
shooting of chief Lamont Scott and the
events that took took place after that
shooting were not surprising to me and
not surprising to me or anybody who has
been working so hard to address issues
of inequity in our great city you see we
knew we had problems and these problems
were ones that I would discuss behind
closed doors with those who understood
my frustration
as passion they were problems that we
talked about in mixed company but very
carefully their problems that we must
now all address you see we as a city had
become masterful at addressing issues
without really addressing them sweeping
them under the rug Charlotte that rug
has been pulled up and while I’m not
exactly certain the way forward I do
know that a solution is going to require
us to prioritize our youth in that 2014
study on economic mobility I know many
of you are aware of what I’m talking
about
there researchers concluded that in
order to address issues of social
mobility we were going to need to tackle
them at a local level by improving
childhood environments how do we do that
it’s my belief that we have a real
opportunity with technology and computer
science you see from a very young age I
was learning by doing with technology
from a very young age I learned computer
science a fundamental of computer
science
I began coding and about the fourth
grade mom was looking for a way to
improve her grocery shopping experience
and the solution appeared right next
door I can still remember that neon sign
future kids for Mom
it was a daycare more or less she could
drop us off for 30 minutes or an hour
and stock up on that week’s bogo items
but for me it was a whole new world from
a very young age I recognized the power
of technology from a very young age I
knew that it was a tool that could and
would transform my life from that first
trip to Gateway country I know some of
you remember that box with the cow print
to spending a full day researching and
finally picking out the best laptop to
take away to college I knew that
technology was the way forward and while
I didn’t choose to continue a formal
computer science education after future
kids I always knew that that was a
career path that was accessible to me I
also knew that it was a lucrative one
that one with anyone anyone who had the
will could develop the skill nearly
twenty years after my home was
transformed by that desktop dinosaur I
entered a classroom as a fourth grade
teacher to learn that not a single
student not one of the students in my
class had a laptop or a computer at home
further the only real technology
available to me as the teacher at that
time in 2009 was an overhead projector
with a light bulb we’ve made
considerable progress distributing
technology through our schools we’ve
done so more equitably and you all have
read the newspaper stories where
thousands of laptops are being deployed
to eliminate the educational achievement
gap I’m scared though I’m scared because
I think that in many places were just
delivering technology for technology’s
sake I think what we’re doing in a lot
of places is simply reducing the number
of copies our teachers are making at the
copy machine every day those new digital
copies are being placed in front of
students like Jakari
a fifth grader who has a love for
numbers and those digital worksheets are
doing nothing more than only further
disenfranchising him from a system that
before his passing the iconic musical
artist Prince noted that when we see a
young african-american
male wearing a hoodie we perceive him to
be a thug yet when we see a young white
male wearing a hoodie we think might be
Mark Zuckerberg or a dot-com billionaire
how do we begin to rewrite this
narrative one that places way too much
emphasis on both race and class we do so
by providing Jakari
with the same experiences that I had as
a child we do so by offering him various
ways to show understanding and by
placing less of an emphasis on his
standardized test scores
you see I first met Yukari about two
years ago I had started teaching coding
classes on Saturday mornings and fairly
early on I knew that Jakari was going to
be an outlier in the room he knew what
was going on one of the first things he
said to the US a– mr. Jessop i’m just
go sit down let me figure out what I’m
gonna teach you now so I used one of my
teacher tricks and I made him the
assistant he walked around the room
helping his peers move their objects on
the screen from one place to another by
coding lines of by stringing lines of
code together
you see Jakari x’ interactions with his
peers as well as the products he was
creating could be described as nothing
less than impressive yet in school
Jakari was failing math and my thoughts
about dakari contradicted everything
both his teacher and his report card had
to say about him so Saturday mornings
they improved Jakari self-esteem he
still shows up rain or shine telling me
what I don’t know and they’ve also
helped his dad to recognize a potential
career path last winter jakar e’s dad
shared with me one Saturday morning that
he too had started taking computer
science classes at the local community
college here’s the part where I’m gonna
throw a lot of statistics that you so
bear with me in 2020 it’s believed that
there will be a million unfilled jobs in
the field of computer science in this
country yet today only about one and
five school children are enrolled in
computer science coursework it probably
comes as no surprise to most of you that
the majority of these kids look
something like me how do we ensure that
students like Jakari can succeed in the
21st century how do we ensure that all
kids have access to various
opportunities to show mastery and to
pursue experiences aligned with their
interests we do so by offering up
computer science to all
my drumbeat for this type of education
is about providing every single student
with the opportunity to make to break
and to fix we do so by ensuring that we
are developing creators not consumers as
this entrenched issue of economic
immobility is not going to be solved by
test scores alone why is it that we have
spent years developing standardized
assessments that only gauge the
knowledge and understanding of a select
few most recently I was reading a
research study that noted that our
teachers working in our poorest schools
were most likely to believe computer
science as a vital component of their
child’s educational experience yet our
school board leadership tends to
disagree both on that survey as well as
in policy in action why because all of
us have been over emphasizing these
assessments these abilities that allow
us to notice school as high-performing
or worthy of an a letter grade I argue
that we need to be able to measure a
student’s ability to read a nonfiction
passage and answer questions as well as
his or her ability to manipulate a
technology tool to produce a desired
outcome so if I did my job here today at
the end of this evening you all will run
out the doors and begin talking about
why computer science education needs to
be taught to all kids but I want to warn
you the dissenters are going to say if
we teach computer science to everyone
we’re going to have too many computer
scientists I’ll remind you of that
question I asked earlier and take a
minute to look around the room how many
biologists are in here do we have one
I can’t really see up there not many one
we’ve got one biologist Charlotte real
talk we can crack the code on economic
and mobility by providing all students
with computer science education we can
crack the code on economic and mobility
by offering these experiences to those
who we know deserve them the most thank
you [Applause]
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