The lack of equity in education continues to be an epidemic in inner city school districts. Despite the fact that my students come from neighborhoods in the South Bronx where homelessness, drugs, and poverty are prevalent, they deserve a quality education experience.
More than 95% of my students receive the cities free lunch program, more than 33% of my students have a learning disability with special education services in their program, and none of my students have the opportunity to experience a 21st century technology driven education.
As a 'Teach For America' alumni corps member I have the opportunity to teach a diverse group of students that come from the South Bronx a computer science course. Not only will I teach this course to general education students, I'll also teach this course to my special education students.
My students are excited to have a computer science program, they are motivated, passionate, and ready to work hard. I am just as excited and I'm committed to ensuring that my students have access, high expectations, and all of the support and encouragement that they need from me to succeed.
My Project
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that by 2024, there will be more than 4.4 million computer-specialist job openings nationwide, however, according to the most recent National Center for Education Statistics data, only 50,000 of the 1.8 million bachelor's degrees received in 2012-13 were in computer science or information science fields. From this we can conclude that we are not preparing our students to be qualified to fill those positions. Additionally, New York City has the largest school district in the country, and computing jobs are the number one source of new wages, yet my students that attend a New York City public school in the South Bronx don't have access to computers. My goal is to increase and enhance the computer science learning opportunities for my students and broaden the participation of Special Education Students, African-American, Latino/a, and female students in learning computer science. How many students have aspirations that are taken away from them because of education inequality? Exploring Computer Science is not just about preparing students for careers in technology; students who know computer science have a jump start across all fields, including mathematics, science, business, health care, and entertainment. Computing has become essential knowledge in nearly every industry and in order to effectively teach computer science, I need my students to have access a hands-on experience.
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