Specifically how did elementary students studying computer science help creat all of this. And also, how can students in schools utilize this to learn computer science. The article I read at County 10 eludes to these things.

Hi, Joe! Great question. Elementary students (and middle and high school students) right now are engaged in a student art competition that will be incorporated in the curricular materials as "sprites" in the Scratch platform. Teachers, district staff, and select community members are the ones who are providing feedback and contributing to the curricular materials as we continue to develop them!

Sounds great! Looking forward to seeing the Sprites!

Thank you for the question, DeLene! We are still learning a lot as we work more closely with our schools, teachers, and community members. However, we have learned - at a high level - the following key takeaways so far:

• The focus groups we conducted at each of the three school districts confirmed the importance of integrating both Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho cultures into the curriculum to pass history and customs to the next generation.
• We've learned about the importance of getting community members to contribute to the artwork, fact checking, and feedback on the curriculum draft. (In fact, we currently have a student art competition running across the Wind River Reservation that will allow for us to incorporate student voice and authorship into the curricular materials!)
• The project team is committed to a true partnership with the schools and tribes but is mindful of the challenges of the pandemic.
• Varying communications methods will be used to keep partner schools and individuals updated on a regular basis.

Your response is excellent.  These are amazing take-aways and really rich.  We all should be doing more in our own communities along these lines. 

Thanks for the suggestion.  Your project sounds very interesting.  I'll check it out. 

DeLene -- I think you bring up an important point -- and required a shift in approach to research, which usually does refer to communities in a more deficit-based way. There is no doubt that there is a lot of work to be done to ensure more students -- including Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho students - have access to high quality STEM and CS education; however we didn't center the project on that "lack of". For example, we intentionally have structured our initial focus groups with school district communities as "strengths-based assessments" that focused on what assets community members have and how they'd like those assets to be incorporated into the curriculum and teacher PD. What was fantastic about those focus groups is that it allowed community members to share with us how important they believed computer science *could be* for their students and community, while also highlighting the importance of ongoing community involvement and review, especially as the original project team members do not live on the Wind River Reservation.

As far as a response to your question about what the average educator can do to bring a rich range of experiences to their students, I have one way to potentially think about it. I would say stick to the fundamentals that good educators already know: (a) engaging parents and community members with ongoing communication about what's happening in your classroom can support investment and (b) incorporating opportunities for students to use their voice, lived experiences, and individual expertise in instructional activities can also support investment. With this particular project, we are still early enough on that I don't have concrete examples to point to, but we are trying to center the communities involved and regularly communicate what is happening (and what isn't working).  

Myriam - great question! We are in the earlier stages of the project still but longer term sustainability (beyond the life of the funding) is something we worry about regularly! To support that, we have individual contacts at each of the three school districts who act as advisors and coordinators with their teachers and students. Additionally, through the teacher PD that will happen, each district will ideally identity a lead teacher to be the primary instructional facilitator coach to continue the work beyond the life of the project; I say "ideally" because we are still identifying some of those lead teachers. The curricular materials being developed will ultimately be open source and owned fully by the school districts to use/adapt/modify beyond the funding for the project. Lastly, we regularly work with the three school districts (and Wyoming Department of Education) to identify additional funding opportunities for us to work together and build on the work that is happening in this project and other home grown initiatives in the districts.

Joseph, thanks for elaborating. You're right, identifying the lead teachers is key. Having done professional development with teachers and teacher leaders for many years, we found that it was important for them to be learners first before they could facilitate learning for their students. Best luck finding additional funding for your great work!

Bethany - nice to meet you! This is so cool! In terms of a specific cultural relevancy framework, we are in the process of working on adapting the existing BootUp PD to fit with this community. Unfortunately and understandably, COVID put a pause on many of our project's activities including most teacher PD. The curricular materials and teacher PD are being developed by BootUp PD, who host all of their materials on their website (https://bootuppd.org/scratch); this site gives you a sense of the student ("coder") facing and teacher facing materials. The teachers on the Wind River Reservation will have access to something similar to this but adapted and iterated based on ongoing feedback from teachers and community members. Because COVID forced a pretty big pause on most teacher facing activities for us, we are still in the process of updating and iterating the curricular materials and teacher PD, and I'd love to learn more about the frameworks you would recommend. We are always learning. I'll shoot you an e-mail, based on the link in your profile. Thank you for the comment!

Great question, Josie! Our team will disseminate the curriculum to other local districts and states that serve Native students with suggestions about how to adapt the curricular materials to make them locally relevant to the population they are serving. Additionally, our project team will create a report for local and state education agencies with “lessons learned”. Districts and states can use this report to inform their policies and practices while planning for and implementing CS education in elementary schools. However, I should note that is later on in the project's timeline, and we are open to suggestions about what that sort of "report" should look like -- we recognize that there may be better ways to share this than just a word document or PDF!

The report will be a valuable resource for other geographical areas interested in engaing in this work.  Your video was so effective in highlighting the community connections that I wonder if video could also help describe your program in the report. Thanks for your response!

Great suggestion, Josie! I also have been thinking about other informal methods like podcasts/Twitter chats/etc. Appreciate the push here to think a little differently about dissemination. :)

Thanks, DeLene! I have really enjoyed the discussions so far! It has pushed my thinking so far -- and also helps me recognize areas of the project where I don't have good answers or approaches. I have been sharing the STEM Video Hall showcase through my Twitter (https://twitter.com/josephpwilson), LinkedIn, and other social media channels I am connected to for teachers to view and add to the discussion. (It was nice to see Joe, above, who is a teacher ask a question!).

In terms of next steps going forward:

• I have reached out to Dr. Klemetsrud, who posted in the comments above, to learn more about the cultural relevancy framework for teacher PD.
• In our next few project team meetings, we will have a focus on longer term sustainability and thinking a bit more intentionally about how this project and work can continue forward beyond the life of the project. We have ideas and initial plans, but this was a good push to revisit those and consider new ideas!
• I want to continue to share more informal updates with both community stakeholders on the Wind River Reservation and folks outside about the progress of this project. I think there are easy, informal ways (i.e. quarterly e-mail list or newsletter, Twitter "slow chat" threaded discussion that operates like a micro-blog and allows more STEM and CS ed folks to see how things are going in the project more informally.) that we can accomplish this. 

Do you or others have other suggestions here for what other next steps we might consider?

Thank you so much for all your work on this project.  I wondered if you had thought about writing up your project for one of the NSTA magazines?  I'm sure you have presented at conferences but I'd love to attend if you ever present at a regional or national conference. 

DeLene -- great suggestion! However, our focus has been less on the integration of science and CS.. and more on the integration of social students and English language arts & CS/CT. Do you think NSTA would still be interested in something like this? (I think NSTA is a great conference -- I used to be a member years ago when I was a high school science teacher!)

Kelly - it's great to hear from you! I'll shoot you a message in a little bit. I was a former high school teacher in Buckeye, Arizona.. and I knew some folks at Science Foundation Arizona for a while. So cool!

Oh my goodness - Joey! Have you been back? Buckeye has grown so much in the last 5 years. It is incredible. I am looking forward to connecting. Sending a reply!

Hi, Christine! We are just in the early stages of implementing the curriculum, so we haven't had a chance to get feedback from anyone except a few teachers and district folks. This is a great idea to consider in the future!