I Spent Spring Break Teaching Girls to Code

https://medium.com/bright/amazing-story-ef14cf2ddf84

by sarika008 • 11 years ago

52 65 11 years ago

spiffyman• 11 years ago

This is a great story. Thanks for sharing. If you don't mind my asking, what materials did you use to develop your curriculum, and have you shared the curriculum anywhere? (Apologies if this is on the site. Didn't see it but might have missed.)

supercanuck• 11 years ago

Looks like it is based off http://www.finchrobot.com and some basic HTML.

http://tina98.github.io/HelloWorld/

oldmanjay• 11 years ago

Interesting article. One line bothered me

Maybe it’s because of the still prevalent mindset that women shouldn’t be in engineering at all.

Is this is an actual prevalent mindset? I've literally never encountered it in the last two decades, although I also never attended university. I do assume, as a white male, that I would be approached by other males who would confide such prejudices in me. I've certainly been approached by white people (in non-engineering contexts) who assumed I would be comfortable with racist behavior so I feel like I would be soaking in obvious, blatant examples of this claim, but it has literally never happened.

Is this just an underlying assumption people have, and it goes unchallenged because of the apparent prevailing belief that contradicting a woman about sexism claims is also sexism? Is it a mindset that one finds primarily on campus? Have I just been lucky in selecting employers?

This is true curiosity, although I'll certainly understand if some of you are too emotional about the topic to avoid downvoting me for asking the question. I've had enough tangles over this issue to know that it's fairly rare to find people willing to calmly discuss these things.

hammerdr• 11 years ago

Just as an opposite anecdote, I find that I run into it all the time. Sometimes, its from people that are outside of the tech industry itself. Sometimes, it is from people that don't realize that they are saying such a thing. Sometimes, its from people of different cultural background (e.g. Chinese developers). I see this in SF, saw it in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and in the various countries I've worked in.

I also recognized that it has took me a lot of time and a lot of effort to get to a point where I recognize it. 10 years ago, many of the things that would set off the "Hey; that does seem right" alarm bell would be unconsciously ignored and taken at face value.

If I may presume, I'm going to suggest that your experience may be because you're more 'attuned' to racism than you are to sexism. For me, at least, it takes effort and willful learning to come to better grips with sexism, racism, ageism, etc. It's hard work!

zxcvcxz• 11 years ago

Can you give an example of this 'coded' sexism that's hard for regular people to spot?

byerley2• 11 years ago

Can you elaborate on why spending time and effort to find offensiveness in things makes sense to you?

The concept seems so outlandish to me that I'm not sure how to word the question more politely, sorry.

cbhl2• 11 years ago

My understanding is that girls tend to hear this from the people they look to for guidance -- teachers, guidance counsellors, friends, and parents.

I'd also recommend an anecdote by Michael Kimmel, see the section "MAKING PRIVILEGE VISIBLE" at http://www.fjaz.com/kimmel.html.

brandonmenc2• 11 years ago

My understanding is that girls tend to hear this from the people they look to for guidance -- teachers, guidance counsellors, friends, and parents.

Aren't most of their teachers, friends, and roughly half of their parents women?

balls1876• 11 years ago

As a white male, why would you expect to experience the mindset that is specific to women?

Perhaps you do encounter it, but just think it's so normal that you don't even recognize it.

The most obvious example I encounter is: a woman who may be of average or above average attraction, and the assumption is she is not an engineer, but instead:

a. Marketer

b. Sales

c. Social Media Manager

d. Community Manager

e. Office Assistant

Further examples--attractiveness means a woman got where she is because of something other than her technical ability.

Or even that attractiveness is even relevant at all.

pron• 11 years ago

Is this just an underlying assumption people have, and it goes unchallenged because of the apparent prevailing belief that contradicting a woman about sexism claims is also sexism?

I think you are not familiar with what sexism is, and confuse it with misogyny. There is nothing about sexism to contradict, and beliefs, prevalent or otherwise, have nothing to do with it. Sexism is simply a state of affairs where women have less power than men in society. Sexism in tech is a fact, especially in software, as it is the only white-collar industry that has seen female participation consistently drop over the past couple of decades, unlike other industries (including science, medicine and other form of engineering) where women participation has been steadily on the rise. As tech is an industry that holds a lot of power, the decline in women participation is sexism.

Your claim that you personally have not witnessed overt misogyny has, therefore, little to do with the reality of sexism. Arguing with women or men about the reality of sexism is also unnecessary, as it is a proven fact.

srgvd4• 11 years ago

So, given the ability to chose between a personal STEM-related project (mostly male) and teaching activity (the area absolutely dominated by female) on her spring break, Christina went for the later.

oalders2• 11 years ago

So, this was your takeaway?

Is teaching in this subject also (sic) "absolutely dominated by female"? I doubt it. It's also an incredible amount of work to organize something like this. Kudos to anyone, regardless of gender, who takes this kind of thing on.

I have two little girls. When they're a bit older, I hope some motivated individual is around to put on an event like this for them. If not, maybe that person will be me. :)

srgvd4• 11 years ago

Is teaching in this subject also (sic) "absolutely dominated by female"? I doubt it.

http://www.oecd.org/std/37964549.pdf

FEMALE DOMINATED OCCUPATIONS IN 20 OECD COUNTRIES, Women to Men Ratio

Pre-primary Education Teaching Associate Professionals 14.5:1

Primary Education Teaching Associate Professionals 6.2:1

Special Education Teaching Professionals 5.6:1

Primary and Pre-primary Education Teaching 5.3:1

It's also an incredible amount of work to organize something like this.

I never said it was simple or unneeded.

amibeingserious• 11 years ago

Yes, I too prefer not hearing about isolated women doing STEM projects, who are afraid of publicizing their work as a female positive activity. Real coders do it alone, and don't share their work or talk about it, ever, and if they do, then that's very girly of them to do.

jperras• 11 years ago

In a survey after the camp, I asked the girls if they may want to pursue computer science in the future: every single student responded with an enthusiastic YES!

Literally and honestly brought a tear to my eye. The world needs more people like Christina Li.

andresmanz• 11 years ago

Back then at school, I held a presentation about a simple calculator I wrote. I explained them my code in the hope to make programming more interesting. They _were_ interested, but it turned out that, in the end, I was the only one to take an apprenticeship as a programmer.

Then in my apprenticeship, we had one single woman in our class. As far as I remember, she only took that apprenticeship because of her father, who was the boss of some IT company. She quit it after three (of four) years. And no, there wasn't even one single comment regarding her being female.

The other girls at that tech school looked at us in funny ways, sometimes saying things like "Oh look, these guys must be the strange programmer nerds! OMG!" - which was funny, because we usually acted more "normal" than they did.

I don't know what it's like today. It's been about six years since then. But at least back then, the women here simply weren't interested in programming. I got to know two female Swiss programmers until now, and I haven't heard from both of them for more than 5 years now.

katelynsills3• 11 years ago

It sounds like you're saying, "Programming was offered to them, but they didn't take it, so apparently they didn't want it."

But what was "programming"? Was it a skill/profession, or a lifestyle that was being offered to the women? I think it's often seen as a lifestyle - i.e. programmers only eat pizza and wear hackathon t-shirts and spend their free time playing video games. Of course this is wildly inaccurate. Good programmers need to only have knowledge and an interest and ability to learn more - what you eat, wear, and enjoy as a hobby shouldn't matter. But if you go to someone and ask if she wants to give up her own lifestyle and own interests to become a "programmer", she's going to say no.

I suspect that so many people enjoy the stereotypical activities that they're unable to separate out the programming lifestyle from the actual skills necessary.

throwaway9996664• 11 years ago

And why do you think this stereotypical lifestyle is supposedly more appealing to men than women?

Ntrails• 11 years ago

I always think back to my uni days where the maths department had several specific scholarships/ bursaries/ prizes for female students as part of a drive to increase gender equality. We probably had around 30% girls in my year? There were other, softer elements to the strategy and overall I reckon it was working, personally. That kind of push is probably how you start to improve demographics.

(Side note: I was however, endlessly amused that the psych course which had 2 guys and ~120 girls had no such concerns about equality...)

alan57• 11 years ago

Inspiring. I was glad to see a coding camp for kids in my neighborhood. It conflicted with another summer camp we'd chosen, now I'm curious to know about the gender breakdown of the participants.

smegel3• 11 years ago

Maybe the lack of women in computer science

I find this ironic coming from an Asian women. Maybe she means a lack of white women in computer science. I recall my University lectures were dominated by Asian students, and of those, the gender balance was pretty even. Among non-Asian students, the vast majority were white men.

balls1876• 11 years ago

What is ironic about this?

smegel3• 11 years ago

Someone coming from a female group which is definitely not lacking in IT complaining about the lack of females? Maybe you just don't understand what irony is.

pcote• 11 years ago

At first, I was confused. The goal of most software projects is to cut costs and increase revenue for some line of business. How does bringing more women into programming help?

I asked my wife this question. Her answer.... It achieves the goal because women traditionally earn less money than men for the same job. I was stunned. Maybe she's right.

balls1876• 11 years ago

It achieves the goal because women traditionally earn less money than men for the same job. I was stunned. Maybe she's right.

The Gender Pay Gap in the US is all but non-existant, and the largest discrepancy is due the fact that women are less likely to negotiate more than men.

The goal of most software projects is to cut costs and increase revenue for some line of business. How does bringing more women into programming help?

There aren't enough good engineers to fill the open software positions. Increasing the pool of qualified applicants directly impacts the ability for teams to deliver software.

balls1876• 11 years ago

Do girls look at Christina Li and see someone who looks weird (admission: I'm old so I have no idea if her personal style choice is fashionable), and does that turn girls off from STEM?

Doctors and Lawyers look more professional, and perhaps that appeals more broadly to the women who would otherwise be qualified to go into tech?

maxerickson• 11 years ago

No.

balls1876• 11 years ago

Then why is "Maybe the lack of women in computer science comes from the stereotype of a male programmer hacking the government in his parents’ basement." relevant?

Presumably because women don't want to be associated with "men who live in their parents basements."

That's pretty similar to women don't want to be associated with "people who don't fit conventional stereotypes."

Blatant sexism hasn't stopped women from achieving in other fields: medicine, law, business, so I wouldn't expect blatant sexism to stop women from achieving in computer science.

Instead, I think that Computer Science doesn't have broad appeal the way other professional fields do.

009900giant• 11 years ago

"Maybe it’s because women like Margaret Hamilton [...] and Grace Hopper [...] aren’t as popularized and mythologized as men like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs."

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are famous for being titans of industry. They are not known for their technical abilities. Steve Jobs never even wrote code.

cheepin• 11 years ago

Bill Gates is absolutely known for his technical abilities.

I Spent Spring Break Teaching Girls to Code

Related Stories