Looking back at my notes from January 10, 2022 when Dana Hall first started thinking about offering a data science course as part of the School's Vision 2025 strategic plan Teaching and Learning the Dana Way initiative, I wrote, “Thanks for including me in this new adventure!” Encouraging more girls to immerse themselves in STEAM courses by creating various opportunities for accelerating and advancing development is a goal that I valued at the time and continue to support today, especially in computer science and engineering. In June of the same year, we got the exciting news that we received a grant from the EE Ford Foundation to make this dream come true.
That’s why my heart is filled with joy during my second year of co-teaching the data science course, when I noticed that a former 6th-grade computer science student of mine ended her Trimester I milestone assignment with the phrase, “I did not just write code, I began to understand it.” I am impressed with the confidence she is gaining by taking initiatives that build on and go beyond the positive work that had been done in her Fundamentals of Computer Science and Technology - Grade 6 and Foundations in Computer Science coding classes. I asked this student to share her experience with you. Here’s B. Revanche's story, in her words:
In sophomore year, I took Foundations in Computer Science because I thought it was important to have some sort of computer science skills in an age where there are a plethora of emerging jobs in the technology and computer science industry. I first learned to code using Scratch and Python to make interactive games. However, I found that even though my teacher and the in-class projects were interesting, personally I did not feel a connection to computer science yet, because I still didn’t feel like “a coder.” It often took me longer than my classmates to understand the “why” behind code in computer science, and I thought that meant I was not meant to code at all. But that all changed when I took Data Science. Why? Because in Data Science, I do not just learn to code; I learn how to tell stories.
In October, students in Data Science were tasked with putting together data stories based on a real Airbnb data set, under an extreme time crunch.
In Data Science, we use the software programming language R on assignments like problem sets that involve making graphs, explaining our findings, interpreting data, and doing the work of a data scientist in the real world. I’ve been able to make a bar chart about Barbie sales in the last decade with an image of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in that one scene from Barbie where they go to the real world singing “Closer to Fine” embedded in the background. On a more serious note, I have also been able to see trends about election data through code, such as how a county may vote based on its diversity. Through these types of projects, I do not just learn about data science, but I learn to be a data scientist. Furthermore, I learned that to be a data scientist, one of the things I needed to do was to learn to struggle. Sometimes, at the sign of any difficult code, I panic and immediately ask for help, but I learned that struggling with code, or how to explain data is not weakness; rather it builds strength, confidence and resilience within my skills as a data scientist, and in a multitude of other areas as well.
In Data Science, because we try to tell stories, we think about the same concepts and ideas as one might in an English class, such as who is my audience, what is my message, and how can I make my idea sound and look more powerful. There is a strong connection between data and its design, because I can tell a story through scatter plots, histograms, bar charts, percentages, lines of best fit, etc. I realize now that when I take my seat in Data Science, I pick up a metaphorical pen when I code, and write a story from a place of confidence and ambition, so I can be better than I was yesterday. Furthermore, it is my sincere hope that my story inspires someone today.
As the head of the Engineering and Computer Science Department, I am dedicated to providing students with unique opportunities to shine and share their stories as they consistently display intellectual curiosity and a passion for knowledge throughout their years at Dana Hall.