Second-grade students in Katy Scowcroft’s classroom at Gault Elementary School held smooth, black rocks or rough, grey rocks in their hands last Wednesday morning.
They fidgeted on the ground and whispered to each other as Scowcroft asked the entire classroom, “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
She had just finished explaining the big question for the day’s science lab lesson: Why are some rocks at the bottom of the creek rough and others smooth?
“You’re the scientists, so you’re going to be solving some problems,” she said.
While this doesn’t immediately appear to be a lesson revolving around computer science, it was exactly that. And it takes a teacher trained in integrating computer science lessons to do it well. When Scowcroft started to receive training on teaching lessons like this last year, she was terrified.
“I have no background in it and found it to be really intimidating,” she said.
A student at Gault Elementary observes a smooth rock during an integrated computer science lesson.
(Kevin Painchaud / Lookout Santa Cruz)
Lessons like this are becoming more and more prevalent at Gault Elementary and Branciforte Middle School, thanks to a National Science Foundation grant. Erin Asamoto, a computer science coach who is leading the “Computer Science for All” grant curriculum, said the grant has several strategies to increase access to all students, including integrating computer science lessons into core curriculum, training teachers so they feel confident giving lessons and engaging families. Asamoto’s specialty is helping teachers create and give these lessons.
“The hope is to reach more student populations instead of isolating it into one specific class,” she said.
In Santa Cruz County, and across the state and country, student access to computer science is limited and varies significantly for different groups. While access has improved, there is still a lot of work to do. The Santa Cruz County Office of Education hosted a series of events last week, for global Computer Science Education Week, in an effort to encourage teachers and students to learn more about computer science.
Limited access to computer science
In 2018, just 35% of high schools nationally offered computer science, compared to 51% this year, according to data from Code.org, a nonprofit working to expand access to computer science across the country and world.
Still, when looking at what’s happening in 37 states, only 4.7% of high school students are enrolled in foundational computer science courses. When breaking down the data at a deeper level, considering specific groups, Santa Cruz County reflects trends happening nationally: girls and Latinos are underrepresented in computer science.
In a survey carried out by Santa Cruz City School officials five years ago, a total of 631 fifth and seventh graders were asked about their experience with computer science.
“White students were significantly more likely to say they have learned computer science, are interested in programming, and to have a family member that uses computer science in their job,” researcher Jill Denner wrote in the NSF grant proposal about the survey. “And while girls were just as interested in learning programming as boys, boys were significantly more likely to have learned it.”
Denner, a senior research scientist at Scotts Valley-based education research nonprofit Education, Training and Research, has been partnering with Asamoto, local school districts and organizations on how to improve access. A similar large-scale survey …….