Reaching Across the Hallway (2023)


Description

The CS for Social Studies project (formerly ‘Reaching Across the Hallway‘) supports rural teachers to integrate computer science into middle school social studies classrooms, using asset-based pedagogy to support student learning. 

NSF Award: 2010256

Discussion

This discussion took place during the TERC Video Showcase Event Nov. 14-21, 2023. Discussion is now closed.
14 Comments
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Debra Bernstein
Debra Bernstein
November 13, 2023 3:46 pm
Thank you for your interest in our project! The CS for Social Studies project is currently in its 4th year of implementation. We welcome a discussion around the potential synergy between computer science and other disciplines (especially non-STEM disciplines), about the role of professional development and coaching to support teacher learning and implementation of integrated lessons, and about your work in similar areas!
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
November 14, 2023 2:12 pm
Hi! Loved seeing how engaged teachers are!
Do you have examples of the types of activities that have been developed through the CS for Social Studies project?
Michael Berson
Michael Berson
November 15, 2023 9:15 am
Reply to  Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
We make connections with our teacher participants through the use of community-based primary sources from the Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/ and the Library of Virginia https://www.lva.virginia.gov/ to support their lesson planning. The teachers create Twine stories supported by primary sources.
Kristen Franklin
Kristen Franklin
November 15, 2023 11:17 am
Reply to  Nuria Jaumot-Pascual
In addition to the resources Michael shared, visit https://curriculum.codevirginia.org/, which links to project materials posted on GoOpenVA, CodeVA’s Twine Editor, and the Twine Trail Guide. Thank you for your comment and question!
Mia Ong
Mia Ong
November 14, 2023 4:33 pm
Hi Debra and Team! I loved the creative, interdisciplinary aspects of this project. I also enjoyed hearing in the teachers’ words how they felt supported and how they had new resources for their social studies lessons. Where do you source the data for this project? How expansive, or how limited, are the topics that are taught with CS datasets? Thanks.
Eric Hochberg
Eric Hochberg
November 15, 2023 12:23 pm
Reply to  Mia Ong
Thanks, Mia, for your questions. The project shared a handful of potentially useful data analysis tools during professional learning activities, and we left it to teachers to decide whether to use any of these (and whether to focus on data and analysis standards) based on their own history/social studies content and the specific objectives they identified for integrated lessons. One of the tools teachers learned about is Concord Consortium’s CODAP (Common Online Data Analysis Platform), which provides some sample datasets that connect well with middle school civics content in particular. The teacher in the video who mentioned a data analysis activity happened to learn about a specific activity at an in-state conference and was subsequently able to access the dataset used in that activity (which had already been pre-loaded into CODAP), which included political polling data from another part of the same state. In short, we didn’t specifically source data for teachers to use in analysis activities, and topics for integrated lessons that have incorporated data analysis could be anything addressed in standards for any middle school history/social studies course (generally, US history and civics).
Brian Drayton
Brian Drayton
November 14, 2023 8:39 pm
The teachers are clearly stimulated and engaged, I am glad to have a chance to spend at least 3 minutes with your work! I am curious about two things — first, are the (say) history teachers incorporating computer science, or computing tools (e.g. for data analysis)?
Second, I am curious about school-cultural characteristics that might help or hinder teachers’ engaging in these cross-disciplinary activities, and might affect persistence/sustainability (à la Coburn’s model)?
Kristen Franklin
Kristen Franklin
November 15, 2023 11:56 am
Reply to  Brian Drayton
Hi Brian, and thank you for your questions. The HSS teachers are incorporating computer science into their core content with the support of their schools’ computer science or technology coaches. We chose to focus mainly on Algorithms & Programming and Data & Analysis. The teachers use various methods to integrate CS (both plugged and unplugged). Teachers use the computing tool Twine, which allows the students to incorporate storytelling, primary sources, and multiple perspectives into their HSS learning.

As we delve into Hard and Difficult History using primary sources and multiple perspectives, we push the envelope in some rural school districts. However, most of our participants and their administrators are extremely receptive to approaching their HSS content in new ways. Participants shared that they felt incorporating CS and, specifically, Twine into their HSS course is helping them to be better teachers and helping their students to be more creative, empathetic, and engaged with the HSS content. One participant is planning a Twine professional development for his school, which is beyond this project. Many participants plan to continue integrating CS and HSS after this project ends. Teachers embrace their local history and the rich cultural capital their students bring to their classrooms and lessons.

Traci Higgins
Traci Higgins
November 16, 2023 1:31 pm
I am so glad I tuned in to this video! I am very interested in learning more about your experience working with social studies teachers. I am in the process of launching a project that partners with middle school social studies teachers to explore the potential for student-driven investigations of civic data using CODAP that would align with their current curricula. I am curious about what you have learned through your project work that might be especially helpful as I begin planning our first summer workshop to kick off this new project. I would love to find time to meet for a more in depth conversation!
Debra Bernstein
Debra Bernstein
November 17, 2023 11:54 am
Reply to  Traci Higgins
Thanks for your comment, Traci! As you’ll see from the responses above, we had one pair of teachers who used CODAP early in the project. Teachers have also been using a tool called Twine to integrate CS standards around Algorithms and Programming into their social studies instruction. It would be great to connect and learn more about your new project! I’ll reach out over email to get us started.
Anushree Bopardikar
Anushree Bopardikar
November 17, 2023 11:10 am
I enjoyed learning about how teachers and students can be supported to make connections across disciplines in their curricula. It was helpful to hear teachers’ experiences with interdisciplinary curricula and how they have been drawing on a broad range of resources and collegial learning to do so. Could you say more about the kinds of activities or the underlying model of the PD and coaching provided in this project?
Valerie Fawley
Valerie Fawley
November 20, 2023 6:10 am
Reply to  Anushree Bopardikar
Thank you for viewing our video! Our PD has evolved over the three years, and is primarily virtual. In doing so, we try to balance direct instruction with model lessons, hands-on activities (as much as possible with virtual learning), and small group discussions. We hold PD for 5 days in the summer, for about 5 hours each, and then we have 5 sessions during the school year for 2 hours each. In the summer, we touched on all the cornerstones of the project and spent a lot of time getting comfortable with programming in Twine. In our follow-up sessions, we have been spending time on the coaching aspect, Twine, and will start investigating how to be culturally responsive and use Asset Based Pedagogy this spring. We just completed an in-person field trip where participants explored the Library of Virginia and the Black History Museum on Saturday. Then, we applied these sources on Sunday by building an example student project in Twine and the accompanying lesson assets needed.Our coaching model is a supported Peer Coaching process, where our facilitator-coaches first review the lesson materials and then meet with the team of teachers who are implementing it. In this session, they address any gaps in the lesson or ways to improve it. Then the teachers present their lesson to students and have a post-implementation coaching session to debrief. Teacher teams have two coaching sessions during the year. Our facilitator-coaches are both retired classroom teachers, one who taught computer science, and the other who taught history and has been integrating computer science into other courses for several years.
Valerie Fawley
Valerie Fawley
November 20, 2023 6:09 am
Thank you for viewing our video! Our PD has evolved over the three years, and is primarily virtual. In doing so, we try to balance direct instruction with model lessons, hands-on activities (as much as possible with virtual learning), and small group discussions. We hold PD for 5 days in the summer, for about 5 hours each, and then we have 5 sessions during the school year for 2 hours each. In the summer, we touched on all the cornerstones of the project and spent a lot of time getting comfortable with programming in Twine. In our follow-up sessions, we have been spending time on the coaching aspect, Twine, and will start investigating how to be culturally responsive and use Asset Based Pedagogy this spring. We just completed an in-person field trip where participants explored the Library of Virginia and the Black History Museum on Saturday. Then, we applied these sources on Sunday by building an example student project in Twine and the accompanying lesson assets needed.

Our coaching model is a supported Peer Coaching process, where our facilitator-coaches first review the lesson materials and then meet with the team of teachers who are implementing it. In this session, they address any gaps in the lesson or ways to improve it. Then the teachers present their lesson to students and have a post-implementation coaching session to debrief. Teacher teams have two coaching sessions during the year. Our facilitator-coaches are both retired classroom teachers, one who taught computer science, and the other who taught history and has been integrating computer science into other courses for several years.

Jennifer Knudsen
Jennifer Knudsen
November 20, 2023 9:55 am
Interdisciplinary learning is important for so many reasons, and it’s great to see teachers building connections between ss and cs.
I also love the use of Codap, a wonderful free data analysis tool!
And making use of Library of Congress and other free, high quality resources—love that too!

Two questions for you:
(1)How is this program specially tailored to rural areas? I know something about the challenges and strengths in rural communities and wonder how you draw in strengths and address challenges.
(2) How do the CS teachers take to CODAP? Does this tool fit into their views of what CS is?

I am also interested in how peer to peer coaching is going—let’s have a conversation, because I’ve been wondering how this could work in our VisTe project.