Girl Power by Design: Professional Learning Community

Professional learning communities work to improve the skills and knowledge of the PLC
through collaboration, expertise exchange, and dialogue. PLCs also operate with
specific goals in mind, and ours will be to improve the achievement and recruitment of
Black and Latina girls. We will meet monthly to share expertise, engage in
discourse, and work collaboratively to create strategies to effectively recruit and
retain BIPOC girls in computing. As we come together in the community, we will discuss
computing strategies for girls of color, culturally responsive computing, intersectionality,
and effective pedagogical strategies and practices. Our work will allow us
to be an action-based PLC and reevaluate and refine the strategies needed to improve
curriculum and recruitment to increase the number of Black and Latina girls in computing
courses.

Syllabus Links to an external site.

- Essential questions:
  1. How do you engage in culturally
    responsive pedagogy?
  2. What is culturally responsive computing
    and how can it be used to retain and
    BIPOC girls?
  3. How do the social, political,
    environmental practices impact the
    recruitment and retention of BIPOC
    girls?
- Learning Outcomes:
  1. Draw connections between the historical divide in
    education in the United States and its current impact
    on Black girl and Latina schooling experiences.
  2. Connect with PLC members in a way that elicits
    support and growth for the community.
  3. Develop methods for recruiting and retaining Black
    and Latina girls within traditional school settings.
  4. Determine ways to create sustainable and culturally
    responsive computing practices.
- Deliverables:
  1. Each PLC member will be required to complete one of the following:

- 1. - PLC Disclosure: Folks should be sharing opinions, offering critiques of readings, making
      connections to educational experiences, asking and responding to questions posed in
      the PLC.
    - Community Event/Workshops: Create an engaging event that brings together parents
      and students in an effort to make computing courses relevant and interesting for Black
      and Latina(x) girls (could resent outcomes of PLC).
    - Culturally responsive curriculum/advertisements: Create curriculum for BIPOC girls in
      computer programming. Use the CRC lesson plan template to build out the lesson.
    - Design tools to increase enrollment in ICT pathways by February.
    - Hackathons: Bring the community together to solve a problem in a hands-on way. PBL
      that will help team grow and recruit girls of color.
    - Social Media: Create a social media account that focuses on getting information out
      about the digital divide, culturally responsive computing strategies use it as a
      recruitment tool for young girls of color.
    - Community Informational: Community building activities will be key to informing key
      demographics.
  2. A presentation of a plan that will help in increasing the recruitment and retention of African American girls and Latinas in computer science.
  3. Electronic Portfolio of Deliverable to be shared at a culminating event to be held in May of 2023.
  4. Completed survey.
- Monthly meeting schedule:
  - This program is an 8-month experience starting Thursday, February 17th, 2022. The monthly meeting will
    be held virtually on the third Thursday of the month (except April will be the 4th Thursday of the
    month). There will be asynchronous assignments, a project of the participant's choice, and a culminating
    event to share your work with university colleagues.

PLC Staff:

Dr. Dale Allender, Facilitator.

Dale Allender, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor sharing his time with three Sac State College of Education departments: Teaching Credentials, Education Doctorate Program, and the Masters in Multicultural Education. Dr. Allender is also Adjunct Professor in the Ethnic Studies Department at Mills College at Northeastern University. In 2017 Dr. Allender received a 2.6 million dollar grant to help build an Ethnic Studies Education ecosystem supporting bilingual and BIPOC teacher recruitment and professional development in the Sacramento Region. His publications include Our Stories in Our Voices with Greggory Yee Mark, the first high school Ethnic Studies textbook. Dr. Allender's most recent publications include co-authored chapters on critical media analysis of progressive messaging about Black girls and women for the book Media Crease, and on Bilingual teacher recruitment in the Handbook on Research on Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers. Dr. Allender is also the author and curator of the www.ethnicstudiesinteractive.com Links to an external site..

Dr. Anna Baynes, Facilitator

Anna Baynes is an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department. She is a Co-PI on the Girl Power by Design Grant. Before she joined Sacramento State, she was a software developer at IBM in cloud computing and data science areas. She received her Ph.D. and Masters in Computer Science at the University of Michigan and her Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering at the University of Washington.

Dr. Aaminah Norris, Principal Investigator. Ehgosa Obaizamomwan Hamilton, Curriculum Specialist. Maha Elsinbawi, Research and Participant Facilitator.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Award 2122709