Meet 2019-20 CSTA Equity Fellow Cindy Wong.
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Starting this month, CSTA will be highlighting our 2019-20 Equity Fellows and the projects they are working on during their Fellowship. We are kicking off these spotlights by introducing you to Cindy Wong, a Technology Teacher at PS41Q in Bayside, New York. Wong is working alongside Todd Lash on a project “to curate and provide for the community, strategies shared by other educators who have developed and used equity-focused education practiced through trial and error in their own classrooms.” Check back throughout the month, as we spotlight Lash and their project.
Five Questions With Cindy Wong
What do you hope to achieve as a CSTA Equity Fellow? As an Equity Fellow, I hope to address the equity issues in school and bring more inclusive education to my students and build a more culturally responsive curriculum to meet all of my learners and their needs.
Can you describe how you’ve disrupted inequities in your classroom?
It’s actually a great time to be a New York City public school teacher. One of the chancellor’s initiatives is Equity and Excellence [CS] for All, so I’ve been able to bring in, through the computer science training, some of the computer science curriculum to my students as young as kindergarten. We’ve started talking about algorithms and loops and iterations and It’s very exciting.
How did you get involved in teaching computer science?
I’ve been teaching for 12 years. The first nine I was a third-grade teacher in an ICT classroom with special ed and general ed students. Then three years ago the technology position opened up in my school and I luckily got the cluster position and I’ve been going to a lot of CSforAll’s professional development training to bring more computer science to students.
What does equity in CS mean to you?
Equity is when everyone gets what they need in order to succeed. So I want to make sure that all my students get all the available resources out there so that they can succeed in computer science.
Why should others consider teaching computer science?
Teachers should teach computer science because it’s creative and innovative and there are so many ways to approach it. It makes it fun and you get to build the curriculum you that you wish to give your students.
Our CSTA Equity Fellows will be sharing their projects with attendees at the 2020 CSTA Annual Conference, July 11-15, 2020, in Arlington, Virginia. Don’t miss out on their presentations!
