Watch for micro-aggression in the classroom and beyond ...

Take a look at this recent ACM blog post by Valerie Barr taking taking to heart feedback from a student about how to keep teaching programming fair for everyone. In short, tone and moderating peer programming teams to listen for project imbalances were no surprise to me. But, I found it thought provoking to consider her points about assignment deadline impact and project evaluation strategies. Which gets into the whole issue of "micro-aggression" in competitive fields, such that programming has become. This recent PBS Newshour interview shows a great discussion of the "micro-aggression" concept in tech. From this interview, I started following Liz Gannes coverage of the Ellen Pao/Kleiner Perkins discrimination trial on Re/code, and plan to follow her new byline there about innovation and the impact on technology. Even when you've been through micro-aggression in the workplace, the suggestions from Barr's blog reminded me how far I still have to go to help build a fairer playing field when teaching. I hadn't thought about how some young learners might consider themselves better programmers if they'd pulled an all-nighter to complete a project due by 8am, but then, of course, I've worked in start ups where dramatic hours racked up elbows out quiet efficiency navigating a project within normal 8 hour work days, to attract career rewards. Or how encouraging students to share their code (for this article Barr uses Github as an example, in my teaching, "Studio" sharing/posting in Scratch 2.0) subtly favors kids who are more confident in their skills, which tend to be boys, still, and gives the impression that non-sharers don't create work worth as much. Plus, with the recent attention about how once your gender is known in sharing venues like gaming multi-player environments, the risk of horrible shaming and outright threats, yet another way women learn to "hold back" for just plain self-preservation, not because they think their work or opinions are inferior.

I'll follow the responses to Barr's blog, because I think now more than ever, as role models, women teaching tech who've grown up fielding micro-aggressions need to find good ways to call it out and inoculate against it in all the insidious ways it pops up, day to day, big and small.