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We know that people of all kinds: scientists, activists

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storytellers, and engineers, use code to express themselves and solve problems.

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We also know that multilingual students can participate in those conversations-- some already do.

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But how can cs teachers foster that participation in school?

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It all starts with your planning.

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We find it useful for teachers to begin planning by answering the questions:

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Code for what? What conversation will code become a part of?

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Let's meet Ms. Silfa.

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Ms. Silfa is a middle school science teacher in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City.

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Ms. Silfa worked with researchers on our project to bring code into her seventh grade bilingual science class.

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She knew she needed to cover weather and scientific models,

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but at first it wasn't clear how best to incorporate code.

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But then one day, a researcher overheard some of Ms. Silfa's students talking about hurricane Maria,

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which had devastated Puerto Ricco at the start of that school year.

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Karen: Hurricane Maria occurred in September of 2017 and a lot of my students had experience

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with hurricanes because in the Dominican Republic there have also been many hurricanes as well.

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In the news they were saying that there was no water, there was no electricity,

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so there was a lot of things that were happening at the moment.

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Sarane: We realized that the issue of Hurricane Maria hit on a sweet spot for curriculum design that brought together three areas.

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First of all, it was a conversation that students were already having with each other and likely their families.

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This topic was relevant to students and their communities.

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Second, it correlated with topics Karen had to cover in science.

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Karen: For science we talked about what models are and how models are used in science. We talked about physical models.

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Sarane: Third, it brought in code and computing tools and practices.

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During Hurricane Maria, computational models were in the news: models predicting the weather,

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representing immigration patterns, arguing about the total death count on the island, and explaining the extent of the devastation.

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With all of this in mind, Ms. Silfa decided to focus her unit on the topic of Hurricane Maria impacts,

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intentionally bringing together practices and ideas from those three circles:

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computing, community, and school subjects, in this case science. So, how did she do it?

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Karen: The three circles approach helps me in my planning because I have to keep in mind

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how the community, how I could use the community, what scientific content I have to cover,

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and using computer science as well. So it helps me very much with my planning for my unit.

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Sarane: The culminating project was for her students to use Scratch, a block space coding program,

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to present the effects of the hurricane to audiences including their families and community-based scientists

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using any language. To prepare their models, students did research about the impacts of strong storms

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by interviewing family members activists and scientists on the ground, engaging in science and community at the same time.

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Karen: They also examined physical and computational models about hurricanes

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from both english and spanish media they looked at the different types of model

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and the limitations there are in both what are the limitations from

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physical models the limitations of computational models and

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how that even though you create a model it's not

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a hundred percent like real life then they started making their own models

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they first drew a model first when the hurricane passed then this happened

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so a cause and effect

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they did so they did it on paper and they

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then they did it in scratch as students brought their models to life in scratch

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they learned key practices in computing like debugging and events and behaviors

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we talked about you know for something to happen you have to tell

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the computer to do it to cap it off students shared their

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projects with an authentic audience the American Association of

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Latinos in Stem went one day to the classroom and the

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kids were able to show their projects with them

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there was some representative from con edison that were there

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engineers and the kids were excited sharing the projects and explaining with

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them what they did during the unit students

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not only learned their 7th grade curriculum

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but how to use code and models to make a difference in their communities

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they did so syncretically. Borrowing from scholar Kris Gutierrez and others

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we use the word syncretic to describe the act of merging practices that

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usually stand in opposition to each other

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in a way that creates greater meaning this means

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combining them into more than the sum of their parts without denying the tension

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between them science classes often actively

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marginalize and undermine community knowledge syncretic pedagogy on the

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other hand allows students to build on that

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knowledge and take control of the conversation

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by leveraging science to further the well-being of their communities

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trans languaging helps create syncretic conversations

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as students bring language ideas and practices

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associated with different places together reveal those tensions

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and do productive work across them and code is part of these conversations

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miss selfa students use language learned in their communities to engage

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science concepts they also use language from science

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like cause and effect to learn programming in scratch

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they use computational models and code to help them

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understand the hurricane's impacts on the community

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most importantly they leverage language and experience from all three circles to

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create deeper meaning we find that the richest

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conversations for students in cs are syncretic when i use the three

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circles in my class the impact that i've seen is

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I see more student engagement when we're doing the projects they take

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ownership because they feel like they're doing something that

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is important to them is important for their community

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it's another resource basically for them conversations about

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with and through code are all around us in school subjects and in the wider

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community you must also recognize code can have

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detrimental or even oppressive effects in students lives

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truly supporting multilingual learners and all kids

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in cs means facing these conversations head on

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ultimately it's students who will change the conversation

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you