Hello, everybody, and welcome to Learn with the Expert. We're so excited to have you join us tonight. As we are waiting for everyone to join, we would love for you to introduce yourself in the chat, share where you're from, your role, and your grade level. The chat is located on the right-hand side of your screen, and if you don't see it, look at the bottom right corner of the chat for the chat icon, and just tap it to open it up. Did you know that next week is Computer Science Education Week? December 5th through 9th, classrooms will inspire K through 12 students all over the U.S. to take interest in computer science. We're so excited to have our expert today, Jacob, who will share accessible ways that we can provide equitable STEAM instruction and the impact his strategies have had on youth that he works with. So seeing that next week is Computer Science Week and Computer Science is an important part of STEAM instruction. We will end by sharing some resources from Seesaw that will support you to apply Jacob's strategies to make your instruction more personally relevant, inspiring, and impactful. So let's see who we have with us. Hi, Ellen from Massachusetts, welcome. Looks like we have Stacey joining us from Modesto, California. So California, Jacob around in your neck of the woods. Hi, Tyler from Singapore. All right, Tyler is a STEAM teacher at the Canadian International School. Hello, Emily, welcome, welcome. We're so excited to have you. Hi, Jen. Hello, Rosa. Welcome, welcome, hi, Craig. We have another person from Shanghai, Matthew. Judy, well, welcome everybody. We're so excited to have you here today. So we do have a few housekeeping items before we actually dive in. If there are any questions during our session that you would like Jacob to answer, please click on that Q&A tab and ask them there. This just ensures that we don't miss any of the questions. And if there are questions that go in answer, we will reach out to you and answer them after the webinar. All other comments, reactions, ideas, thoughts can be put in the chat so that all participants can view them. Just make sure that your chat and your Q&A tabs are open. If they're not and you're just joining us, click on the chat icon in the lower right corner and you'll have the option to toggle between the chat, the Q&A and the handouts tab. The handouts tab includes key takeaways from today's session. This session is also being recorded and a link to the recording will be shared with you as well as the handout from the webinar in a follow-up email in about 24 to 48 hours after the session is complete. I see we had a couple other people join us. Hello, Debbie. Hello, Meena. Hello, hello. Welcome, welcome. All right. So now that you all have introduced yourself, you're probably wondering who we are. My name is Mia. I am the Training and Professional Development Specialist here at CISAW. So I work with educators like yourself to show you ways to innovate with CISAW in your classrooms. And I am based in Chicago, Illinois. So hello, everybody. And I am excited to introduce our expert to you. Jacob Adams is the Executive Director of STEM to the future, which is a nonprofit focused on inspiring and motivating Black and Latin youth to use STEM to create the world that they want and desire. Jacob has over 10 years of experience in education, where he was a Teach for America Corpse member and elementary school teacher at a Blue Ribbon School in Brownsville, Brooklyn, and elementary school teacher at an emerging school in Harlem, an instructional coach throughout Los Angeles, and an entrepreneur serving thousands of Black and Latin youth and educators in LA County. Welcome, Jacob. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Mia. All right. So as we begin, I want us to explore a few technologies that we're created to solve problems. So you may be familiar with this device that you see here. It's the pacemaker. The pacemaker was designed to regulate irregular heartbeat, a potentially life-threatening complication. This little device that you see could be implanted in the chest to help control the heartbeat. Revolutionary technology that really saved many lives. However, there was a slight problem when this was created. When women started to receive pacemakers, doctors found that it was less effective and often resulted in more complications in women than in men. Why you may ask? Because women are typically underrepresented in cardiac clinical trials. So the device was not tested equitably in women as they were in men. So it was not developed to meet the needs of the female body. So researchers actually had to go back and take all genders into account and make improvements to adjust the pacemaker. So you probably have seen this. I know all of you probably have. This is another technology designed to make our lives easier, which is the automatic soap dispenser. So without needing to touch the device and get germs all over your hands, this automatic soap dispenser was far more hygienic than actually using the faucet to turn on the water and to cleanse your hands. Yet as automatic dispensers were installed and used more widely, some flaws were found. When someone with darker skin tones tried to use the soap dispenser, it did not work. The sensors were not developed with all skin tones in mind. So future designs needed to be adjusted to work for all skin tones from the very lightest to the very darkest. Just like the pacemaker, which we just talked about, this technology didn't account for all users and was less effective as a result. So here is one more example. This third example shows the power of designing solutions for every person, not just the average in mind. So the curb cut, which you see here, was designed to help people in wheelchairs get over a curb on the sidewalk in order to cross the street. This invention made walkways far more accessible for those in wheelchairs and it benefited people, not only in wheelchairs, but people on bikes and walkers and elderly people as well, people pushing strollers with bags behind them. It made it much easier for those people to cross the street as well. Because of this, the curb cut effect was coined. The curb cut effect states that when you design for those furthest from the margins, you really make things better for everyone in the process. As we can see from these examples, representation in steam matters. When there is equity in steam, we're able to develop technology that solves problems important to all groups of people and we're more likely to develop solutions that actually work for all groups of people. Equity in steam directly impacts what technology is being created and who it's being designed for. Equity is a big idea. It can mean a lot of things. So we would love to hear from you. In the chat, please type your response to this question. What does equity in steam mean to you? What does equity in steam mean to you? So for me personally, it's about giving all students as a former educator in a low income high poverty area. It's about giving my students the same access to steam and design opportunities as other students would have. All right. At its foundation, equity is really about access, like I was just saying, and about opportunity and also so much more. It's about positive, personal identification with steam, topics and skills. It's enabling students to make tangible impacts on their lives and communities. It's equipping students with the tools that they need to create new systems and solutions for the social justice issues they face now and in the future. I see some responses in the chat. It's about taking in all people and giving accessibility. But Craig said equal access to courses and enrichment opportunities. Ellen shared taking multiple perspectives. Jennifer said educating all kids when there are lacks of support, you are absolutely correct. So before we actually jump in with our expert, a quick note about workforce development. Many states are adopting steam or computer science standards and curricula to ensure that students have the skills that they need for their future careers. So for many, the rationale behind this is to build the pipeline for jobs and steam because as jobs and steam increase year over year, the number of qualified candidates for those jobs are falling short. So of course we want all students to be set up for success in their future careers. But we're here to say computer science in the classroom needs to go beyond just workforce development. For one, the future is way too far off to really deeply motivate a way to be deeply motivating students. And we don't even know what jobs there will be when our students enter the workforce. So instead of focusing on an abstract future, what if we focus on the now, the right now? We can connect to students in parent interest. We can spark their curiosities and creativities and help them see why steam and computer science skills are important for their lives and their community. Not 10 years from now, but today. So in doing so, we'll develop the problem solving communication and critical thinking skills that we know our students need to thrive in whatever career they pursue, even ones that probably aren't even invented yet. So this is exactly what we're going to dive into today. So how can we do this? How can we enable our students to solve the challenges that are important to them now and in their future? So our expert Jacob will share how he has answered this question. So we'll hear about the steam programs he has created to support students in learning the skills they need to start making a difference in their worlds today. So before I turn it up over to Jacob, let's learn a little bit more about our expert first. So we talked a little bit about Jacob being our executive director of steam for the future. So steam to the future, excuse me, to the future. Their mission is to really inspire and motivate Black and Latinx youth to use steam to create a world that they want and deserve, as I mentioned earlier. Steam to the future creates integrated hands-on learning experiences that use science, technology, engineering and arts and math to support students to develop solutions to real-world problems such as climate change, public safety and poverty. Youth in this program creatively develop creativity and problem solving and collaboration skills as they see how a variety of steam pathways can be used to create the future that we know they deserve. Steam to the future includes three different programs. So the first program is planting the seed and they partner with schools and after-school programs who want to show students how do you steam to uplift themselves and their community? Next is for the greater good, which provides educators with Vedic curriculum and professional development to implement a liberatory steam-based learning experiences. And finally, the last program is theory and practice. This program is a student-led initiative where students work together to decide on and execute their own projects in their communities. So we're gonna be focusing mostly, most of our time here on this third part of the program. But as you can see, this program really speaks to the entire community. Jacob will walk you through a few examples of projects that came out of this program. All right, so let's go ahead and learn with the expert. Today, Jacob will show us how to help students create a clear vision for the world they want and deserve. Then we'll learn how they use steam to develop projects that support their vision. Finally, we'll see how they connect their community organizations to implement the projects. All right, without further ado, now it's time for our expert, Jacob, to come on and take it away. Hello, Jacob, thank you. Hey, me and I appreciate you. Yeah, thanks for the setting the stage so nicely and I appreciate everybody for being here today or just tonight or in the morning, depending on where you're at. So yeah, excited to share more about myself and the work we're doing at Stim to the Future. So prior to founding Stim to the Future, as we were saying, I was a first grade teacher and then after that I was a second grade teacher and after that I was an instructional coach. So while I'm not in the classroom like traditionally anymore, that's definitely where I started my journey and in education professionally at least and even with Stim to the Future, I still teach one class a week because I really enjoy teaching. I actually taught it earlier today. But I still really enjoy teaching and it helps me actually practice these things that I talk about or that practice, yeah, practice these things I'm talking about tonight and just help me stay in touch and in tune with the kids and the things they're interested in. Yeah, so my time as a, especially my time as a first grade teacher, definitely informs the work that I do now and the work that we do at Stim to the Future. So I was placed at a very rigid charter school in Brownsville, Brooklyn, in New York City, pretty not familiar. So the school was like 99% black and over 95% like we were just lunch, very under resourced neighborhood, but the school has some of the highest test scores in New York City. So like consequently, the school got a lot of attention. It was a blue ribbon school, like any given day, that could be like 30 or 50 people coming to observe like our best practices. And I remember leaving that school and went to my second school and I was in professional development and the videos they're showing us on how to teach are the people who were across the hall from me and like who were next to me at the school I just came from. So the school had a lot of like that school and that network just had a lot of influence over what education looks like. So yeah, that really kind of got me pretty invested in wanting to, yeah, yeah, I'm really invested in education further than I was. Cause for that school, like that school and that model of teaching, like the whole purpose was to like get the highest test scores possible and everything else was just kind of like secondary or non-existent. Yeah, so you know what I'm saying, we're being seen as a model for success when we really aren't preparing kids to be people who can actually use what they're learning in ways that benefit them in the community. So I was thinking, you know, if this is seen as a model, then, you know, we're all in trouble like as a society because these students are, you know, so definitely some of the most like historically underrepresented youth and definitely marginalized and whether there's issues, it could be climate change, poverty, yeah, community safety, like all these issues are disproportionately impact black, brown and poor students. And yet those students who are at a quote unquote like elite school aren't really learning how to disrupt those things. So without any type of, I think formal disruption, then we just really keep repeating the status quo. So now the work we do as STEM to the future is largely to show folks like what youth are capable of when they learn in ways that are aligned to their interests and the needs of the community. So hopefully you'll be able to see that as I talk about our student layer programs, theory and practice. So we started theory and practice in the winter of 2020. You know, a lot of us probably try to block out that time in our lives, but coming out of that, coming out of that summer, we had like the, on the national stage was the murder of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in LA.  So there was just a lot of violence going on in terms of like on TV or on social media. And then also that was the first winter of COVID which was very deadly. So it's just a lot of trauma going on at that time. And we were doing like professional development with teachers and feedback we were getting from them was that their kids were feeling like really isolated, you know, being that they couldn't go to school in person. And so we wanted to create something that would help students be able to create a connection with one another and also the community. And also we wanted them to be able to learn in a way where they didn't have to feel like all this violence and negativity and trauma that was going on outside. Like the world doesn't have, they don't, we didn't want them to get lost in that and think like the world has to be that way. We wanted them to be able to see that they can work together and come up with their own ideas for the world they want to live and they can work together to create it. So now I kind of walk through like our three phases of how we do that. So the first phase is creating a clear vision. Having students create a clear vision for the world they want and deserve. So a big part of this is giving students a space where they can like be their true selves. So like Paulo Freire said, like without a sense of identity, there could be no struggle. So you really want to start, we feel like you really want to start by having the kids do kind of some internal work and maybe even us as teachers doing that work to think about like, who are we? What makes us up as individuals? And also by starting the year, the unit or the program through this lens, it really helps your students be able to be more mindful of who they are and like their different identities, both of themselves and also of their peers. And you're also like communicating to the kids like this is a place where we can dream. We're able to create a different type of future in this classroom. And I think that really helps spark a certain level of joy and engagement from the kids. So as an educator, it's like a really great opportunity for you to really, really, really get to know your students.  What things do they notice in the world by having a space to talk about, you know, how do they see themselves? Like these are questions that we can often not, I mean, even as adults, people often don't ask us these questions, but they're so like fundamental to who we are. So I think by having your kids, being able to ask your kids these questions and actually creating a space where they can figure this stuff out together, it really does wonder. So I'm gonna provide a couple of examples of what that could look like. So one activity is an identity collage. And through this, you can have your students choose, you know, maybe up to like five different ideas or things that represent them. You know, these could be words, they could, you know, you're writing words, decoratively, they could have drawings, they could find pictures off the internet, they could go old school and like click things out of a magazine, they could build different things with Legos, you know, you have a lot of creativity to figure out the ways in which you could have them represent themselves. But then from there, the students share, you know, after they've built their five different representations, the students are sharing why they chose those things and they're explaining how they represent them. So as a teacher, this like really helps you learn more about your kids and you know, learn about your kids and learn about how your kids see themselves and also helps you like, know the themes or patterns that might be consistent, you know, across your class. So like this data is very invaluable for a lot of different reasons. For one, it gives you insight, like I was saying, it gives you insight to how your kids see themselves and as your class is like talking about these different issues, as you're moving forward, you can also be able to discuss how those issues like affect different identities differently. And we actually have this lesson on Seesaw which will be in a chat shortly. And then our next another example of how you can help your students create a clear vision for the world they want and deserve, is this activity we do called Freedom Dreaming. And so, and so like really the part of that, like part of the foundation of teaching really anything but definitely like steam through a social justice land is starting at a place of being imaginative. So in Black Futurism, there's this idea that basically says if you wanna change the future, you have to change the present. It's like now is the future and the present are happening like simultaneously. So this Freedom Dream activity, like prompt your students to think about the present and like what could the present and future look like? So we typically introduce the Freedom Dream activity. We usually tee it up through this lesson where we're talking about rights versus privileges. So we just have a different, we have like housing, like housing, food, education, voting, excuse me, a couple of other things. And we just ask the kids like, is this the right or privilege? And then they have, or should it be a right or should it be a privilege? And then the kids are basically saying what they think and then providing evidence for which is which. So for us, that just like helps the students kind of contextualize and frame the things that they think everyone should have. You could also do that by asking them questions like, what things does our community need? What things does our community want? What does our community already have? Cause you know, there's already a lot of assets that are present in the community, but those are like some prompted questions you could ask and get them to kind of start to tap into that, to their imagination. And then the students will visualize and represent the world they wanna live in. So you could do this several different ways, but one way we do it is through having students, it's like through teaching audio engineering at the same time. And so we'll have the kids like record, edit, like record and edit the podcasts where they've already written out their freedom dreams and then they will, so they write their freedom dreams out and then they'll record them. So I will actually play an example of the one real quick. Hello. I wanna live in a world where it is clean, it is healthy, it is safe. Everyone is free to stay alive. We are not in the hospital. It is fun. Everyone helps others. We are all treated equally. We are not scared. We live a happy life. We live a long life. We are not sad. Our good dreams come true. Everyone lives long. Our lives are vibrant. We only have the good type of stuff. Bye. Oh yeah, so that's like one of our, from the one of the first times we did the freedom dream activity and then even that, like you could see how the student would start to shape like the world she wants to live in. You just talked a lot about people being healthy, like living long lives. So this was during late fall of like 2020. So it was definitely a lot of depths happening with COVID at that time. I thought you can just kind of see what was going on with her and like what was going on in the world through the things she was talking about. But completing that activity like really gives the kids the freedom to dream about like what they want to be true and it helps you as an educator. I really get to know your students like once again. So then rather than like assuming you know what your kids are interested in, like this activity gives them the opportunity to creatively express that. Yeah, so then instead of rather telling the kids like, hey, today here's the issues that we're gonna tackle kind of allows them to have more autonomy over the different types of things that they want to learn about and the things they want to, you know, things they want to share or things they want to address. And similarly, just like the identity collage, like you can go back and revisit these freedom dreams throughout the year just to kind of make sure that you're incorporating the different issues or topics that your kids have said they care about.  Yeah, so that's part one after your students have started to create, you know, this idea of the world they want to live in, next is starting to develop steam projects to support that vision. So even with the identity collage, depending how you do it, and thank you. And freedom dream activity, you're already incorporating steam in there. And now you can keep building on that to help students see how they can now use steam to address these things that they care about and be able to use steam to have a real-world impact. So one example I'll share is, from my environmental justice program, I should have mentioned this, we have three different theory and practice programs. One's environmental justice, one is coding robotics for girls, and then another one is a creative design program. So in the environmental justice program, when we first launched it back in 2020, we were exposing to students to like just different environmental topics. So we didn't even start with, what environmental justice was just the broad subject? So in there, we talked about things like epigenetics, which is why in her freedom dreams, she said she only wanted the good stress because we were talking about stress and how I can carry over from generations and what that looks like. So we talked about epigenetics, we talked about air quality, water quality and food apartheid. So each week or two weeks, depending on what the subject was, we would talk about these topics and then they would do steam activities like align to it. So in epigenetics, they worked on my graphic design and they were building, creating like protest flyers, things similar with air quality, water quality, I know we mailed them like water testing kits, food apartheid, we mailed them like micro green sets. So while we're talking about these things, they're also getting to do these hands-on projects that are aligned. So after learning about the issues throughout the course of the year and exploring those different steam skills, the students collaborated and they decided how they wanted to use what they, or they collaborated to figure out how they wanted to use what they're learning to have a positive impact on the community. So that was really cool because the kids, now for a couple of weeks, they're just like preparing to pitch to one another. About what they want to do. So one kid, I know, wanted to do something with theater. Another kid wanted something with music, I believe. And then there was a kid who wanted to start like an urban farm or a garden. And so during their pitches, the kid who wanted to do, and the other kids were just kind of down to hear the pitches and then decide what they wanted to do. So through those conversations, the kid who was the most interested in the urban form, he ended up just, my politics, really ended up adding like the theater and the music to his pitch as a way to say like, we can actually do all of these things that we're interested in through an urban form. So they all pitched and then they voted and then through that like democratic process, they decided to start an urban form. Which I had no, and at that point, you know, we had no idea what they would pick. So that was like the first part of that program. And then the next, after that, that program ended at that point and so then when we picked back up a couple of months later, now we were teaching our kids urban forming. There were growing a variety of foods. We partnered with this like nutrition organization who taught our kids how to cook. And through cooking, our students were like learning, like basically kind of seeing they had like a new passion. They didn't even know they would enjoy it that much. At first it was just something they wanted to try. And so for their community project, one of the main things they did was create a cookbook as you can kind of, you can see like four kids, five kids. So they were, yeah. So I'll tell you a little bit more in the second how they were able to help, you know, partner with the community to make that cookbook. Yeah, but I remember thinking the kids were gonna cook for people for their project, but they decided to go another way. And that can be like one of the big challenge as an educator is like being, you know, it's nice to know like where we're going, even when we're taught to make curriculum, you start with the end and then work backwards.  Like that's up for the kids to decide. And so I think that's just like a mindset thing to keep in mind as you're creating these more like libertarian programs. Yeah, so just a, I know it was a lot, I just kind of break through the, break down those steps real quick that were encapsulated in their environmental justice example. So one thing you wanna do is just like be able to spark the kids' interests. So that's why we did like, we had the different topics only for like a week or two.  And then we would progress on to the other ones. So over the course of the program, they're able to try a lot of different things. And then decide on like, what things do we really wanna focus on? You know, none of us were experts in any of the stuff we were talking about. So that definitely helps with not need, I mean with some of the stuff, but with like epigenetics, air quality, like where we don't study those things. So we were just being able to gather resources and partner with folks to be able to develop that type of curriculum. While I say that to say like, don't feel like you need to be an expert. You can find YouTube videos, you can find other resources, articles that you can share with your kids that can help them decide, or you know, help give them some context. And then from there, the next step is having like I was saying, the students used to pick what topic or topics or skills that they wanna focus on and then figuring out how they can use those things to make a difference in the community. So one thing as a teacher, you sort of make sure that you're collecting this data that the kids are interested in and planning like check-ins with the group to figure out what things that they find interesting. So you can start to plan for the future as they are expressing like the things that they really want to go deeper on. Cool, so then the third and final phase is connecting with the community and grassroots organization. So, you know, we started by talking about how giving the students a space to say what they're really interested in. Then we developed like the STEAM projects to help them bring their vision for the world, bring their vision to the world to life and also develop these like critical STEAM skills. And next, what we really wanna do is connect with folks in the community who are already doing the work, doing the work that the students are interested in and you know, we can work with them to help the students be able to design whatever it is that's gonna help meet an unmet need in the community. So thinking back to the environmental justice example that I mentioned, I go, Sam, we partnered with a local organization called CLA who was teaching our kids how to cook. Now I think I can cook decently for other people on the team that they can cook too, but never taught cooking and have probably no business teaching cooking. So we were able to partner with an organization that that's what they do. So that's really helpful. And I know it's not always that simple or that easy. So partnering with a community organization could also look like, could look like finding videos of people who are doing that work, maybe one of the parents has already has some interest doing that, but yeah, or it could just be like have a Zoom call, have someone kind of present to your kids. It doesn't always have to be, you know, someone coming in and doing something over the whole course of the year. But by working with them, by working with that organization, it really helped our kids like be able to learn from an expert. And then we also were able to take them to the farmer's market a few times where the students were surveying people, including other kids. And so as they were doing that, they were learning, you know, do you collect them that data help them better understand the different problems that they were trying to address and learn like what people cared about, which is how they decided to, what like recipes were in the cookbook. They were asking kids like, what type of food do they like to eat? When do they eat? Do they cook? Asking them those types of questions, collecting that data and then they use that data to actually make the cookbook. And another example of how you can engage the community to help your students. The first year we were doing this program, we had one of the activists talk to the robotics program and she's like a housing activist. And so for the community project for the robotics group, they decided to build these extensions on the robot that could deliver PPE to the elders that lived in the activist's housing complex. So I think that is a really dope example of how the kids can use with their learning to have a positive impact on the community. What else it goes to show like, we had a housing activist talking to kids in the coding program and the kids in the coding program were still able to figure out how they could use what they were learning to help something that could be seemingly not online. So I was like, any folks in the neighborhood or in the community who are doing positive work, even if it doesn't seem like it's a clear connection, I would say bring them in because it's also just good for the kids to see, people who are having a positive impact on the community and they can just use that experience and contextualize it in a way that's relevant to them. Yeah, so that's basically what I was saying here. You can have a guest speakers. Now also, in terms of collecting the data to learn more about what's going on in the neighborhood, you can have students collect data with a classroom, you can have them collect data with other students at the school. They can have a survey they do outside of school at home. I would say some type of mechanism to help your students really, you could find a survey it's already made if that has data from the community, which is really important for them to make sure that they're rooting, rooting their work and their ideas and what, in like the needs of the community. So one more example, so you can kind of see this or two more quick examples, so you can kind of see this in practice in our creative design program. Our students were after surveying people at the farmer's market, they were asking them what issues they cared about and they learned that LGBTQ rights had the least support from the community. And so what they wanted to do was actually be able to raise awareness about the LGBTQ community. So they ended up creating a clothing brand called Little Village of Love, you know, with the idea of anybody can love anybody and that should be, you know, and they weren't, yeah, the inmate could love anybody and they shouldn't be judged for it. And so they ended up creating this brand, they gave a lot of their clothes away at this, gave a lot of their clothes away, which I'll talk about in a second at this mutual aid event, but then they also created a pop-up store where they sold their clothes. Over the course of four hours, they made $800 between their clothes and their artwork, and then they decided how they wanted to split the money up amongst themselves, and then they worked together to donate the rest to identify LGBTQ org and unhoused, and we're serving unhoused individuals and then they donated the rest of the money to them. So the last example is our mutual aid event, which just kind of brings all these different things that we've been talking about together. Something that's a real powerful combination for a few reasons. So one, in those three different programs, it allowed all the kids to come together and see how they can, even though their programs have different focus, they could still work together to be able to have a positive impact on the community. So I was like, for a schoolteacher, maybe the kids in your own class might have a central issue or different issues you're working on. You could have them in groups where they're doing it separately, but then there could be a way where they could come together and work on something, or maybe if there was a teacher across the hall or another teacher at another school who was doing this type of work, it could be really powerful to be able to bring these groups together. So additionally, it was also a really powerful event because it provided our kids with the opportunity to put their ideas into practice. So they created the robotics program, created and coded this Lego hand sanitizer machine, and they built a hand washing station for unhoused folks to use before they were getting food, created a design program, designed and gave away clothes to unhoused folks, and the environmental justice group distributed food that they hate group and they gave that to the unhoused. Yeah, and it also took a tour of the community we're in which also helped, that was led by the folks who did the mutual aid event. So that just helped them also be around and see other people who are using their passions that have like a positive impact, a positive material impact on the community. And also, you know, I gotta say, it helped them see that they can do that at their, you know, even though they're in elementary middle school. So yeah, next, I think that was a lot of stuff, a lot of different examples, and now it can sound difficult to do. Like it sounds good, but it's like, how do we ever have the time for that? People don't even know where to start. But I'd say, and it's definitely taken us a few years like iterations to get to where we're at now. So I'm gonna just share like some of the most important lessons that we've learned in developing this approach to equitable steam instruction. And also, yeah, equitable steam instruction. So one is just creating a space for students to share the identity's interest in voice. I thought we talked about that a lot, but it's really, really important for the students to be able to express themselves and feel safe in the class because difficult conversations could come up. Yeah, and like, you'll never really know the types of growth that you might see from a student. Our kids had this event where they, basically an event where they were teaching the community about clean air. They created these different workshops and I was asking one kid about it afterwards and she said, I was like, how was it, you know, running your station? She was like, at first, when people came to my game, where I was teaching people about pollution, I was nervous, but when they left, I felt proud. And I was like, why'd you feel proud? She said, I felt proud because I'm usually shy, but I took responsibility and talked to people. So it's like, I'm always amazed about other impacts you might have, like other ways that students are growing outside of the content, you know, outside of the steam aspect of it. Next, like integrating students' interests into what you're already doing. We all like to be places where we all like to learn. I would imagine most of us, if not all of us, like to learn things that we're interested in. So as soon as your students know that you are listening to them and making their interests a part of the classroom, it makes a huge difference.  And for the content, you can watch a video, read a couple of articles, but I would say don't shy away from, don't shy away from a topic or a skill just because you're not an expert in it, but you definitely don't need to be. And lastly, just building your skills and capacity over time.  If they're interested in coding, do a couple of projects just so that you can show them to your kids and you can be able to provide them some support. Some poor, providing support on that tool, but like once again, you know, it's a journey and definitely don't feel like you have to be a, you know, full stack engineer to be able to expose your kids to coding in meaningful ways. Yeah, so definitely appreciate the time and we'll be around to answer any questions. Thank you, Jacob. That was so inspiring to hear about all those projects and see how your programs equip students to make the world a better place. Like I'm amazed the PPE coding robots, the hand-washing state stations, truly amazing. As we know, computer education week, computer science education week is next week and this provides a perfect opportunity to put some of these ideas into practice and to inspire your students to really take an entrance in computer science. So we have a few resources to help you out with that. So in the seesaw library, you'll find free computer science lessons that you can use in your classroom next week. So these lessons are ready to go and easy to use. You don't have to be an expert, just like Jacob said, to get your students started. We have all the resources included in all of these lessons with you. So we are also going to share a computer science scope in sequence with some ideas for how to make the most out of computer science week. So I'm actually right now going to share my screen and I'm going to jump into my actual seesaw account and I am going to show you how you can access all of these computer science collections that we have to offer. So here I am in my seesaw account. So what you're going to wanna do is you're going to want to tap that little library button. You can find that at the very top of your seesaw journal next to the messages button. And once you tap on that library tab, then you're going to scroll down to the computer science tile. This is that green one here with the little gears there. So once you get to that tile, you just gonna tap on it and then you're gonna see here all of our computer science collections. So you see we have a variety of collections here that range in topic from digital leadership, computational thinking, coding for our youngest learners K-2 and for third through fifth grade as well. We have collections on visual data talks which teach students how to analyze data within real world context. And we have steam collections, design thinking and computer science collections on careers in CS as well. So in order to view all of the lessons within a specific collection, all you have to do is tap on that blue view all lessons button. I am gonna go ahead and jump into this steam design thinking collection. Steam design thinking includes instructional videos that teach students about the topics that they are going to help solve a real world problem with real world examples. There are several options available within each lesson. You can see here there are a number of different lessons on first that talk about the basics of design thinking and then actually getting students to jump in and solve a problem. So I'm actually going to jump into a one of these lessons. I'm gonna jump into the very first one, the design on thinking lesson here. And so we have these include an introduction video to introduce your students to the topic of that specific lesson. You do have the option to present that to the class whole group. You can play this with your students and then also include it in this specific lesson. Our questions, discussion questions that you can engage your students in, you'll notice that all of this is in the Seesaw platform. So you can see you have all of the Seesaw tools here that you can use to model and demo along with your students how to use those tools while they're engaged in that discussion. And so after there is a follow-up activity. So this one has a connect activity in this introduction. However, there may be more than one here. You can flexibly assign these activities to your students to complete and then they just respond using those creative tools. One thing that you will notice is that as I mentioned, you don't have to be an expert in design thinking or computer science. We have everything that you need within these lessons to support you in implementing them successfully in your classroom. So one thing that is included in all of these lessons is a lesson plan. So you can see here is the lesson plan for this specific lesson. And the lesson plan just includes your teacher objective and student I will statements. It also includes the standards that the lesson addresses, any resources such as materials that you may need to use to complete the lesson and also instructional format that the lesson is best recommended for. So you can see here, this lesson is recommended to be presented to the whole group as well as with partners. You'll notice that as you go through these lessons that they can be used in several different instructional routines. So it really gives you the flexibility to incorporate these lessons into your day to day. The lesson plan also includes teacher tips for teaching the lesson. And then it goes through an outline of step-by-step and instructions on how to teach with a breakdown of about how long each one of those lessons within the activity will take. So I'm just going to tap back over here to the design thinking. And I just wanna click into just another, actually I wanna show you a couple other things. So I'm gonna click into the second of the lessons or the second half of the lessons here. So you can see the difference. The first lesson was an introduction. It was more condensed. You can see here that this lesson after students have learned about the design thinking process, you can see these lessons are a bit more comprehensive here and a bit more involved. This still includes that introduction which you will present to the whole class but there are several activities here or several options available within the lessons have really practiced that design thinking process. So you as a teacher can pick one. You can see there are three options here or you can do all three. Each challenge follows the same series of steps and allows for exploration across many subjects including science, technology, engineering, art, math all of those esteemed subjects here. So I am gonna go back and I wanna highlight one more resource that we have for you. So if I tap back on computer science again here are all of those computer science collections. I'm gonna go back into that esteemed design thinking by tapping that view all lessons. And you'll also notice that there is a tab that says jump to implementation resources. And when I do that, it is going to take you to the teacher implementation guide for that collection. So we do have implementation guides for all of our CS collections and the implementation guide really just helps you get started teaching the lessons in the classroom. It also includes those best practices as you can see here for presenting the material for incorporating them throughout your day. So as I mentioned everything that you need to be successful and everything that your students need to be successful are included in the lessons. So each computer science lesson is aligned to the CSTA the computer science teaching association standards and they do support equitable scene instructions. The lessons are cross curricular they mix both hands on and digital learning and they really help students make those connections between computer science themselves and the world around them. We do wanna make it easier for students to get started with students to start to really make those positive personal connections to steam and computer science. So we are excited to share that we are hosting three virtual field trips on each field trips will be joined by people who use computer science in their jobs in a variety of ways. So on December 7th, two of our CSOT engineers will share how they write code to make CSOT work. On December 9th, we'll have actually two events. So the first event we'll talk with Evan Gannon who is a senior programmer of creative technology to learn how to use code to create fun and interactive experience with lights. And then on December 9th, the second session we'll also see how computer science is used to create animations in art. Our rainbow CSOT's rainbow bear will be joining us along with our production team at CSOT. I see some people in the chat saying they cannot join. That's okay, register anyway. We will be sharing out the link to the recording afterwards which you can play for your students after. So we hope that you can join us for those virtual events with your students, at least one of them or sign up to get the recording. So as we close today, I would love to take a moment to reflect on the session today. Why is computer science important? Go ahead and put your responses in the chat. Why is it important? Why should we give our students these experiences? Why should we teach it? I know you have a lot on your plate. So really wanna hear from you what you learned about the importance of computer science. So we just dropped in the chat the link for you to register for those student events if you are able to make it or if you want to sign up for the recording. So computer science, Robin said is the future. You're absolutely right. Yes. And Ellen, yes, we have no idea what the future holds. We don't know what careers will look like in the future but we have the technology and the problem solving. We know that technology and problem solving will be a part of it. So really equipping our students with those skills so that they can apply those to those careers in the future. Thank you so much for sharing. I saw another person in the chat say they came in a little bit late. No worries, this session is being recorded. So we will be sharing a link to the recording following the session in an email in about 24 to 48 hours with the recording. So you can go back and listen to the beginning of the session as well as all of the resources that we share. So computer science is really about giving our students the skills that they need to solve the challenges that are important to them and their futures. Equity in computer science means creating opportunities and conditions where everyone can participate and contribute to make an impact on their lives and in their community. So I wanna thank all of you for joining us and I wanna thank Jacob for sharing his expertise on how we can enable students to solve problems of our world with computer science. We would love before we go, we do have a couple more minutes. So Jacob is gonna come back on and join us and we are going to take some of your questions. So if you have not put a question yet in the Q&A, go ahead and do that now. So let's see. All right, so we do have a question. What advice do you have for teachers for computer science, Jacob? Yeah, for sure. I would say this could be like a really good opportunity to kind of like do a little test and see what your kids are interested in and then if you don't already know and is seeing how you can pair that with computer science after this week, you know, after next week. So that could be a week where you maybe for like the freedom dream activity, you have them like create and code a story of the world they wanna live in or you could have them like code and create some type of like identity collage where they could do that through some type of a computer science lesson. And then from there, you could use that info and kind of build on that to keep creating like projects and lessons that where kids can see how coding can be used in conjunction with, you know, like social justice. I love that. That's the perfect opportunity to test it out, to try to, you know, get students' interests and ideas. And then like you said, take it for there. If there are any other questions, you can drop those in the Q&A tab. Looks like we might have answered all of the questions that we have today. So we would love, if there are any more questions, we do have a couple minutes, we can come back to those. However, we would love to get your feedback. Your feedback is really valuable to us. We welcome it. So we would love for you to share your feedback. We're gonna drop a link to a feedback form in the chat. And it's also gonna pop up when the webinar ends. We rely on this feedback to bring sessions like this to you, to make our sessions better, to bring you exactly topics and experts that you really want to hear from and to bring you the best trainings possible.  Also, thank you everybody for joining us today and Jacob, thank you again for joining us as well. And we hope that you have an amazing Computer Science Education Week. We hope you join us for our CSaw field trips, you and your students. And see you soon, here at CSaw. Thank you, everybody. Thanks everyone. Have a wonderful rest of your day.


Chuck Hagel was sworn in as the 24th Secretary of Defense February 27th, taking over for Leon Panetta. Following the ceremony, Hagel held an all-hands call at the Pentagon where he expressed his gratitude for being selected for the position.  That's the great privilege. You're not joining my team, I'm joining your team. And I want you to know how proud I am of the opportunity the President of the United States has given me and the Congress of the United States has given me. And I would tell you that as I told the President, as I told the Congress, that I will do everything in my power to be the kind of leader that you expect and you deserve. Also, the kind of leader the country expects and deserves. Hagel said that he will do everything in his power as Secretary of Defense to ensure that the military, their families, and veterans are taken care of. He added that although he is proud of his career, nothing makes him more proud than his work he does with the military and its veterans. Much of my life has been about doing everything I could in some way to help veterans and their families, whether it was chairing the Agent Orange payment program, whatever it was. And I'm proud of that. I'm more proud of that than any businesses or anything else I've been involved in. And I'm proud of my background.  But nothing makes me prouder, has ever made me prouder than my association with the military and the veterans. From the Defense Media Activity, I'm Petty Officer Brandy Wills.