Compassionate Coding in the Classroom

Editor's Notes

• #3: My background – 10 years as an engineer, including time spent leading teams Wide variety: - Health tech, ed tech, entertainment - Big companies, small companies, research institutions Startups & established firms Web dev, app dev, middleware
• #4: Common thread: there’s blind spot when it comes to engineering teams – people We put the emphasis on the technology and not the people This shows up in a number of ways
• #5: Mildest consequence – confused users – we build products without empathizing with people using them
• #6: Personal conflicts on the team affect the bottom line
• #7: More serious consequences of tech’s lack of concern for people: Lack of diversity Fake news Displaced jobs Insensitive – FB pics of someone’s dead children Addicting Distracting Bullying, harassment Misleading
• #8: Consequences for Individual developers - Stress, anxiety
• #9: sad story out today about an Uber employee who committed suicide, blamed on stress and issues of racial bias at work
• #10: This is a pretty sad state of affairs in tech – can we do better?
• #11: I think so, and believe the answer is compassion. I don’t mean this in a religious sense. My CS background makes me view it as an optimization problem: minimize the suffering of everyone involved
• #12: This approach requires caring about all the human beings who Make tech Use tech Are affected by it
• #13: This is why I started Compassionate Coding I work with tech companies to understand their human problems and then give custom workshops on emotional intelligence to address those issues You can think of it as take agile’s people over process concept to the extreme
• #14: The only article that came up when I searched compassion and coding when starting my company It was written by an educator So today I’m going to focus on the points most relevant to you as educators
• #15: Some of my Twitter connections recently shared poor experiences they’ve had with discouraging teachers
• #16: I’m going to discuss 3 tips for creating a more compassionate classroom
• #18: Fixed mindset ideas
• #20: Believe all students are doing their best given their circumstances Focus instead on continuous improvement,
• #22: - Coding is stressful!
• #23: Developer self-talk is often negative
• #24: Self-compassion is a better response than beating yourself up
• #25: 3 components of self-compassion
• #26: We all have bias
• #27: System 1 – stereotypes. We will tend to favor students who remind of us ourselves This may affect Who we call on Who we give special attention to
• #28: People from a marginalized groups often feel extra anxiety in stressful situations because they fear confirming negative stereotypes about their groups Consider as a possible reason a student seems to be underperforming
• #29: Systemic biases in favor of some groups
• #30: - All we see our Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg; but there are many more stories out there!
• #31: Marketing materials matter – here’s source of images of real women of color in tech
• #32: Summary of the 3 tips
• #33: In tech, we have the reason part covered; what we need to work on is the compassion and empathy part. You as educators are in a powerful position to change the face of technology for the better!