Sanders Middle School Attending the Four Corners Computer Science Convening see our blog from this event here gave 4CSCC an advantage in networking and reaching out to more schools on the Navajo Nation. During these networking sessions, Franklin met Tyrone Joe, a computer science teacher at Sanders Middle School; he was also awarded the 2023 CS Teaching Excellence Award for the 4 Corners region from the Computer Science Teachers Association & Infosys. Mr. Joe is involved with three cohorts: NAU’s Let’s Talk Code, U of A’s Natives Who Code, and Code.org’s CS Discoveries.

Mr. Joe’s interest was sparked upon reading about our session and seeing familiar faces from his cohort attend our presentation. “Teaching computer science was offset by the COVID pandemic,” states Joe, where numerous students were affected by no internet, low bandwidth, shared data, or attendance issues.” Joe shares, “my CS applications have included Tynker, codeSpark Academy, CS First, Kodable, Skill Struck, and Code.org’s Foundations and Discoveries. For this academic year, I will add Project STEM to my middle school classes.” Physical CS used includes Micro:bit, Circuit Playground, Ozobots, Sphero BOLT, Edison robots, and Robolink CoDrone mini, along with future implementation of Dash and Cue robots for his elementary and middle school classes.

Mr. Joe’s plans include working with Indigitize and implementing a CS club – possibly Girls Who Code and plans to apply for grants and participate in drone competitions throughout the reservation. Further, Mr. Joe plans to implement LEGO Spike at the elementary school. There are also prospects of another 4CSCC outreach for next semester’s classes.

The sessions included three one-hour sessions for his middle school classes – grades included 6th, 7th, and 8th. Sessions involved a ‘crash course’ in environmental education and scientific computing. Franklin started the sessions with a presentation highlighting the significance of air quality and our physical surroundings. Aligning our lessons with their curriculum allows students to understand how our environment and surroundings affect our health. Mentioning dirt roads, trash burning, uranium mining, and wood stoves were ideas used to explain why monitoring our surroundings is important for their well-being.