Coding is becoming the subject of choice at one Native American high school.
Via computer science classes, Navajo youths open doors to careers in a cutting-edge field
SHIPROCK, N.M. — It’s the beginning of fourth period at Shiprock High School, and teacher Abigail Cooksey is taking attendance for her daily computer science class. “OK; Veronica, I’ve seen. Howie is here,” she yells as students file into class. On the docket today are database subsets. The kids have been tasked with making sense of a giant data set from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ¶ It’s the first year this type of computer science class has been offered at Shiprock High, which is at the northeastern edge of the Navajo Reservation. In the past, these classes focused on things like how to make a PowerPoint presentation and typing skills, but this year, students are learning the basics of website coding languages like HTML and CSS. ¶ “Instead of thinking about how to use these apps, it’s more about thinking of the possibilities for new apps,” Cooksey explains. ¶ But, for now, they’re starting small.
“We joke that we made ’90s chic websites, because they totally look like things that you saw on the internet in the ’90s,” she adds.
While everyone in class is now pretty enthusiastic, the response was mixed at the beginning of the school year. Some kids were pumped, while others were there just because their guidance counselor enrolled them. But now that it’s up and running, computer science class is making a name for itself, going from the roughly 20 kids enrolled this year to more than 60 next year, which includes the formation of an Advanced Placement-level class, too.
“What I like about it is when you type out everything, all of your instructions, and save, and you find no errors on your page whatsoever. That’s really exciting,” senior Alan Taliman says. “Once you do that and you save it and it starts working from there, the magic all begins with that.”
That attitude is music to Jeff Sagor’s ears. He’s the assistant principal at Shiprock High and the man behind the revamped computer science classes, thanks to his job here last year, which involved bringing in college and career readiness programs.
“When it comes to our students and job opportunities, there aren’t a lot of economically sustainable jobs around here,” Sagor says. “We have welding at our school, as well as things like journalism and the school newspaper.”
But, he adds, the computer science class is quickly becoming one of the most fulfilled career pathways, which is an exciting prospect to administrators at this rural school.
“The opportunities that coding provides for remote work allow students to have both an economically sustainable job and still be a part of this family and community that they are attached to, instead of having to choose between those two options,” Sagor explains.
For Sagor, the goal of offering this type of computer science curriculum is to plant the seed for the students here. He says he hopes they’ll develop an interest early, maybe study it in college and get some entry-level experience that could eventually allow them to come back to their community to work.
“I think an increasing number of teams now do work remotely,” adds Dennis Hoffman, an economist with Arizona State University. “But the question now is do they begin remotely, and my guess is there’s less evidence of that.”
But he says that doesn’t mean it’s impossible, especially after the students get a few years of experience outside of school. Hoffman adds that the idea of getting more people interested in computer science careers, no matter where they live, is smart because the market is tight right now.
Back in Cooksey’s computer science class, the students are stowing away their laptops.
“I think we definitely have students who are all of a sudden thinking, ‘Oh, computers are a career,’ which isn’t something that a lot of my students have thought of before,” Cooksey says.
But there are at least 10 who are thinking that way now.
Every Thursday, just after school, about 10 kids gather at Cooksey’s classroom for an hour affectionately known as Coding Club.
“Everyone is so comfortable with each other here. We just laugh and we program things,” says club president Amber Henderson.
Henderson is a junior, and Coding Club is her brainchild, born after an eight-week boot camp she attended last summer here at Shiprock High.
For Henderson, finding this boot camp was a bit serendipitous. After reading an article about coding in a Seventeen magazine, she said she knew she wanted to jump in. The trouble was, the only summer boot camps she could find were in big, far-away cities like San Francisco and New York.
“And I was pretty bummed about that,” she says.
Travel and lodging costs were not something she or her family could swing. But then, about a month later, Henderson saw a flier for a coding boot camp in Shiprock.
“It was crazy,” she says. “My mom was like, ‘That’s a sign.’ ”
Coincidence or not, Henderson jumped in with eight other Navajo students for the summer class. It was brought to her high school by a tech startup known as Cultivating Coders through a partnership with Teach for America and a non-profit known as Gear Up. But not only did Henderson join other Navajo students, she was taught by Navajo instructors.
“I think it’s powerful when you see people that look like you doing things that you never thought you could do,” says Cultivating Coders founder Charles Ashley. He explains this setup follows the company’s larger mission: improving the racial, gender and geographic diversity of the tech industry.
“Our model is, let’s just bring the tools, and we’ll bring the toolbox, but what we build will come from the community,” he says.
Ashley says his program sets up in areas where the need is high, which tend to be rural communities, in hopes of inspiring someone who might not otherwise get the opportunity to learn what’s becoming a lucrative skill.
Cooksey says while it’s only been about a year since last summer’s boot camp, it’s transformed the way many of her students think about computer science.
Before, it was more like, “It’s a different language, so it looks really overwhelming,” Cooksey says. “It definitely creates a mindset of ‘Oh, that looks too hard; I can’t do that.’ ”
But today, her students are diving right in.
“Which is really cool,” she says. “Considering that our club is entirely Native and 90 percent female.”
So, can efforts like these to improve diversity in the pathway to computer science careers make a difference in overall tech industry diversity? Dr. Kimberly Scott, the director of Arizona State University’s Center for Gender Equity in Science and Technology, says yes and no.
“I think that if we have more AfricanAmerican, Native American, Latina and Asian-American women, in particular, in tech industries, yes, that has solved the issue of diversity,” Scott says. “However, diversity is different than inclusion.”
According to a 2016 report by Intel and Dalberg Global Development Advisors, about two-thirds of tech employees were white, and a majority were men.
While a lack of diversity is something industry leaders have acknowledged is an issue, Scott says the key to attracting and, more importantly, retaining a diverse workforce involves more than just learning how to code.
“It has to be how to collaborate,” Scott says. “How to think in a computational manner, how to write a persuasive argument and how to lead.”
But, she adds, if and when the industry does reach a diversity level that reflects the population, that could be a game-changer in terms of innovation and productivity.