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November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee I think this speaks to some of the comments that were made earlier. We're seeing more organizations adopting specific initiatives and, in some cases, specific departments focused on EDI—equity, diversity, and inclusion—and what that looks like within the organization. In anecdotal conversations that I'm having with women in areas of STEM who do hold senior-level positions within organizations and are on the brink of being part of that 25% who leave, what keeps me hopeful is knowing that there are organizations that are really starting to understand the deep-rooted needs that these women require to remain in these organizations....
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee Yes, that is definitely an example of the kind of work that supports some of our goals. We believe in working with organizations such as Kids Code Jeunesse to establish allies to enable us to broaden our reach to educators across our nation. Again, engaging educators through CanCode certainly mirrors the initiatives that really move kids forward.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee We have organizations representing all areas of innovation as it relates to tech. TELUS is one of our partners. Google is one of our partners. We have quite a few. We have GSC Game World, which is a game development company that is part of Electronic Arts Inc.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee I'm available.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee Absolutely. It hasn't been easy. A lot of our teachers in the code initiatives address those barriers that these teachers, specifically these female teachers, are facing. I think as adults—whether you are an educator, a mom, a mentor—we carry our own fears and beliefs and perceptions of how the technology industry works.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee Sure. We worked with an elementary school teacher last year to develop a lesson for her students on sharing with the classroom who in Canadian politics they felt has had the most impact on a certain area. In your typical politics class or history class, students would write a book report on it in a word document or in a journal.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee More support for teacher training would be helpful. Again, we know that to redesign our approach to computational thinking in terms of education at the extracurricular level is very limiting, so more support on the practical side of equipping our educators across Canada to be able to implement this in their classrooms would be helpful.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee That is a conversation that comes up both within the education system and in working with organizations such as the Boys & Girls Clubs, the YWCA, and the libraries. Libraries are another group that we are increasingly starting to work with. I've had a conversation with the OLA, the Ontario Library Association, and the equivalent in various provinces, to have training for school librarians as well as public librarians.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee So far, we have not encountered that. Most of our work, currently at least, is at the primary school level. We are just starting to work with high school teachers. Most of our experience right now is with the primary school level.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee Right, yes.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee Yes, we're looking to work closer with more and more educators. Through our teachers in the code community, a part of that process, a part of designing a lot of those solutions, involves, to a great deal, a lot of our workshops for teachers learning code. Part of that involves having an open discussion of what we, as an organization and other like organizations need to design for high school teachers to be a better resource.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee Could you clarify your question?
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee We currently have not entered that level of assessment. As you mentioned, and from something I shared earlier, a lot of our instructors are from industry. For example, we will have the senior software developer from Google come to instruct our young girls. We haven't mapped our assessment in research to assess what the impact of that is within the organization.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van
Status of Women committee These are programs we have designed with our team to implement through ladies learning code and our youth programs and teachers learning code.
November 7th, 2017Committee meeting
Carolyn Van