Welcome:

Thank you for visiting and viewing the CSforAll Springfield (MA) RPP video. Our Research Practice-Partnership project formed following an NSF CSforAll EAGER grant and is in the second year of a 4-year NSF CSforAll RPP grant. Our video provides a brief overview of the project, but focuses on the participating teachers and students in this highly diverse school district that serves 12,000 K-5 students. We are especially interested in discussion regarding our strategy of teacher-developed, integrated K-5 CS/CT curricula with tight collaboration between teachers and administrators in the District and researchers. Please feel free to comment on or ask questions about any aspect of our project.

Thank you for your summary. I would love some more information on the professional development piece of the project. I'm wondering how many hours of professional development did each teacher receive before starting to implement the new curriculum? Did you provide in-class modeling/mentoring?

In year one, we had the 16 K and 3rd grade design teachers, their advisors, and the 5 coordinator/teachers take the online LaunchCS PD. That's supposed to be 24 hours, but it took longer. We decided that it overly influenced their curricula design and most importantly did not cover equity and inclusion. For year two we ran separate PD for the 60 K & 3 "early adopters" and the 20 1st and 4th grade design teachers and their advisors (advisors are SPED, ELL and instructional coaches). We had 3 days in the summer and bimonthly 2-4 PD for the K & 3 teachers and 1 day in the summer and monthly PD for the 1st and 4th. There were also weekend PD on Scratch, CodeSpark, Makey-Makey, MicroBIT and other technologies. One of our coordinators is a certified code.org trainer. Curricula (4 grading period modules of 5-10 lessons) were developed by teachers in 3 iterations with substantial feedback from the researchers, district curriculum coordinators, and each other. The goal was to develop expertise on CS/CT teaching and learning among the design team teachers and that they would serve as mentors for the early adopters. The early adopters are in 28 of the 32 schools and will in turn serves as mentors in their buildings. Sorry to go on so long, it is a complicated process with quite good results so far.

We provide incentives for teachers to write lesson plans (mostly in the biological ecological area; also water) as part of the follow up after a professional development experience, but we get fewer than we expected.  We interpet this as "too busy" to do it, but I'm wondering what types of incentives you use to get teachers to participate. 

Delighted to see another project happening in SPS, and especially excited to see Melissa Zeitz involved!  What the teacher said about how taking CS beyond just technology made it more approachable resonated with our experience too.  A good reminder that great STEM curricula make these subjects engaging for both educators and students!

Love this video! Exciting to see teachers talking about their students using the language of CS, especially at such young ages. This project is doing great work!

Thanks, Becky. Yes, things are going well, both the teachers and the students are inspired by CS and the fun and interesting ways CT connects to the elementary curriculum.

In your description of this project, you mentioned it was a, "tight collaboration between teachers and administrators in the District and researchers." It's so important to engage administrators early and often in development work - I'm curious about the role they played in this project. Could describe the role you had in mind for them, and the ways that might be evolving as the project matures?

Great video!  We should connect at some point to discuss successes and challenges with implementation in SPS and with PD.  Also curious as to how you're assessing outcomes and if you have assessment results to share at this point?  

It is great to see all the district leaders, teachers, and students in this video. Because of its depth and scale, the project has the potential to transform CS education for the district, which may have positive ripple effects for the workforce and economy of the region. What are you learning so far about the impact of the PD and experience on teachers, their impressions of CS and their students' interest and potential in technology? Do you have any idea how parents are responding to their young ones learning CT? Any longer term plans for studying how this early exposure to CS may impact students' interest and learning in SPS in middle and high school?

As Scott mentioned above all of the teachers -- the coordinators, the design teams ("innovators"), and the the "early adopters" have developed a strong community. Our research has shown significant growth in teacher leadership skills  and efficacy among the teachers currently involved. The students are highly engaged with the curricula. The district is committed to having our curricula taught in every school and to every student. The wave of entering sixth graders into middle school in 2012 should have some impact.

The "empowerment zone" of independent middle schools between the district run K-5 and HSs, will be "interesting."

Great to see the evident enthusiasm of both learners and teachers.  I also like the emphasis on coding being a way of thinking.   I'm curious about what kind of transfer you hope this kind of thinking will lead to.

 You mention that 23.5% of students have disabilities in this school district.  This is a pretty high number by national standards.  What is the project doing to accommodate these students?

Thanks for sharing your project! I especially appreciated hearing the enthusiasm of the early adopters explaining what they have learned and what they have noticed regarding students' learning. I agree that engagement across the layers of responsibility in a district (leaders-to-classroom teachers) often is the key to success in large endeavors such as yours. Bringing this to scale in your district is certainly plenty of work. I am curious--do you have any advice for districts who might want to embark on a similar project? Are there key things that you have learned that would make the pathway smoother for another district? 

I agree with Florence that selecting the five coordinators was key. It is also true that we have enjoyed support from high levels in the district. We also have a broad-based "advisory team" that includes researchers, evaluators, district and school administrators (principals, district "academic" team and the district IT and accountability team), and coordinators. SPS upgraded networking in all schools and provided laptops to all students and teachers. With the shutdown, the District distributed 10,000 of the laptops to students and families and Comcast is providing "free" WiFi across most of Springfield.  This was key in an economically-challenged city. Now we are looking at how we might adapt the curricula to an online or hybrid teaching environment.

Loved the story about the young kids who shout out about algorithms and loops! Wonderful support from the district to help level the playing field wrt access. Best wishes with the adaption to online or hybrid modes.

It seems evident from the teachers in the video that they have a sense of ownership about this work and potentially empowerment. Is the research measuring how this project may be contributing to that?

Yes, one of the research projects led by Rebecca Woodlawn and her grad student, Itza Martinez, is looking at the growth of leadership skills, efficacy, and the flow of innovation among the teachers and PLCs. They have observed significant growth. One change we made from the original plan for iterative development is the original dyad developing a module maintains control of the module/lessons as they evolve through 3 iterations of design, teaching, assessment and redesign. They the become the experts as we roll the curricula out through "early adopters" and then to all grade level classrooms. It is a team-oriented design process, even so, with all of the grade level design team teachers contributing to the final design with strong input from ELL and SPED advisors and the district curriculum coordinators. It is clear as we move to all schools, that principals are going to play a roll in determining where in a given school's curriculum the modules are taught and whether they is taught by "homeroom" teachers or specialists like instructional technology, computer science, or science teachers.

Hi Carol! Great question. We have several levels of teacher involvement on the project and we are doing research in different ways with teachers at each level. For example, the five teacher leaders work closely with my colleague, Dr. Rebecca Woodland and her doc student Itza Martinez, they are doing research on collaboration among these teachers. There are design team teachers (48 in total when all is said and done) and my research team is doing research on teacher learning and experience of design on the project. The last group are the early adopter teachers ( >50 in this second year, and up to the entire teaching community by the end of year 4). With the early adopters we have been doing survey research, and the third researcher on the the team, Dr. Sneha Veeragoudar Harrell and I are doing case study research on issues of equity with the early adopters  (presented in PD). So, we are doing a lot of research with teachers and I do believe that some of this research will capture teacher's efficacy and ownership of the project (though those questions are not specifically asked).

Adding to the conversation about teacher ownership, I think one by-product of this project will be the development of a replicable model within our district for empowering teachers in the development of learning activities.  Historically, our district has been fairly "top-down" when it comes to curriculum and instruction.  Part of the enthusiasm of our teachers on this project is that they are being asked to create something for their classroom and that has not been a common ask in our district.  I am hopeful we will see other examples of this kind of lesson/curriculum design work in other content areas because it is delightful to see our teachers throw themselves into developing engaging and meaningful learning activities for our students. 

This is an amazing project. Computer science in elementary schools makes so much sense. Three years-ago, I started using Scratch Jr. to do block coding with K-3 students. I never could have imagined how engaging it would be for the students. I hope the project continues for many many years1

While the following is a long list, I need to give credit to the whole team from SPS, UMass, and SageFox. No room to list all of the dedicated teachers on the design teams and to the early adopters.

UMass and Five College Team:
Rick Adrion, PI and Emeritus Professor, UMass
Anna Branch, former CoPI and consultant, Vice Chancellor and Professor, Rutgers
Darrell Earnest, Associate Professor, UMass
Keisha Green, Assistant Professor, UMass
Annie Leonard, Project Facilitator, UMass and Five Colleges, Inc
Jennifer Randall, Associate Professor and Associate Dean, UMass
Enrique Suárez, Assistant Professor, UMass
Florence Sullivan, Professor and Department Chair, UMass
Rebecca Woodland, Professor, UMass
Sneha Veeragoudar Harrell. Research Fellow, UMass
RAs: Sandra Botha, Lian Duan, Itza Martinez, Emrah Pektas

Springfield Team:
Kate Asher, Supervisor of PK-3, SPS
Katie Bevan, CS4All SPS Head Coordinator, SPS
Rachel Chouinard, CS4All SPS K-3 Coordinator, SPS
Jose Escribano, Principal Brightwood Elementary School, SPS
Paul Foster, CS4All SPS Lead and Chief Information and Accountability Officer, SPS
Denise Matuszczak, Sr. Administrator of Digital Learning and Assessment, SPS
Laura Mendes, Director of Literacy PK-5, SPS
Terry Powe, Principal, Elias Brookings School, SPS
Stefania Raschilla, Chief Instructional Officer, SPS
Tom Rachele, Director of ELA 6-12, SPS
Laura Rita, CS4All SPS 1-4 Coordinator, SPS
Stefanie Santaniello, Data Analyst - Strategic Data, SPS
Ronald St. Amand, Director of Science, SPS
Robert St. Lawrence, Director of Information Systems. SPS
Sarah Truoiolo, Director of Mathematics, SPS
Scott Wohlers, CS4All SPS 2-5 Coordinator, SPS
Melissa Zeitz, CS4All SPS Technology Coordinator, SPS
plus 36 K,2,3,& 4 design team and advising teachers, 50 K&3 Early Adopter teachers ... an incredible group!

SageFox Team:
Stacey Sexton, Evaluator, SageFox
Jeff Xavier, lead and Evaluator, SageFox

This is a great project!  I really like the integrated CS/CT approach and the focus on inclusion and diversity.  The students and staff in the video are so enthusiastic.  I will be interested to see the results of your efforts after four years.

Deborah - Thanks!

Rick and team, congratulations on a great and promising approach and project, and amazing to see the level of collaboration the project has created.

Thank you to all of the visitors!

So important this work, both in content and in outreach.  Listening to the teachers respond to the opportunities and the ease of integration and supports is great to hear.  Thank you for sharing.  

For the curricular modules created by pairs, are they given a pedagogical framework to develop in? Do these modules get reviewed by peers? Re-vision/re-design process?  Do lessons differentiate by school? Are there rubrick to guide teachers in instruction, activities and assessment? How do the modules work into PD?

Eric - Thanks for visiting. Congrats on your international project!

Each pair begins the module design (5-10 lessons) with PD before and during. They are advised by the coordinators (which include Instructional Leadership Specialists and and an instructional technology specialist), district curriculum coordinators,  and SPED and ELL teacher advisors. The four pairs at each grade level meet and share their work throughout each round of piloting. After the first round of piloting, assessment and revision, the authoring pair hands their module off to another pair (and takes on another module). The second pair pilots the revised module, assesses the outcome and works with the authoring pair to revise. There is a standard format for documenting the module that includes references to elements of the state standards for Digital Literacy/Computer Science and the embedded subject (ELA, Math, Science, Social Studies), the lesson content, suggested approaches, and links to the technologies used. The revised module is handed off to a third pair and the process repeats. So each module (there are 4, one per grading period) is taught, assessed and revised 3 times. Florence Sullivan and her students observe the teaching of at least one instance of each module and work with the design teachers on revisions. Rebecca Woodland and her student work with the Coordinators and design teams on the development process as critical friends. The design team teachers, coordinators and the researchers are then involved in designing PD for the early adopters and then for the district-wide roll out. Sneha Veeragoudar Harrell looks carefully at the strategy and the curricula to see if we are meeting our goals for diversity, equity and inclusion and helps design an equity component to all of the PD.

I'll alert Florence, Rebecca, and Sneha to provide clarifications, but  the site is only one for another 15 minutes.

The process in careful to differentiate by classroom (to engage all students) as well as by school and guidance is given in the module documentation. Our plan is to build an online resource around the modules to support district-wide implementation.