Suggestions and Considerations for District-wide Implementation with Abby Funabiki

In this interview with Abby Funabiki, we discuss the differences between for-profit and nonprofit CS education organizations, the importance and ability for nonprofits to collaborate with others, CS as the new digital divide, how to get started with CS implementation with limited or no extra funding, suggestions and considerations for district-wide implementation, and much more.

welcome back to another episode of the
csk8 podcast my name is jared o'leary
in this week's episode i'm interviewing
a fellow co-worker abby funabiki
in this particular episode we are going
to discuss the differences between
for-profit and non-profit cs education
organizations
the importance and ability for
non-profits to collaborate with others
something that many for-profits cannot
do computer science as the new digital
divide
how to get started with computer science
implementation with limited or no
extra funding some suggestions and
considerations for district-wide
implementation
and so much more friendly reminder you
can find
links that we discuss in the show notes
for example some of the discussions on
cs4all's resources like the visions
framework and the scripps workshop
so you can find that by clicking the
link in your app or by going to
jarrodoleary.com and clicking on the
podcast
tab with all that being said i hope you
enjoyed this interview with abby
funabiki which will now begin with an
introduction by abby
well i'm abby funubiki i'm the associate
executive director at boot up
professional development
at boot up i'm lucky enough to work with
school districts across the country
as they implement district-wide computer
science for all
initiatives i get to spend time learning
about
districts uniqueness and do whatever i
can to support
their vision for what computer science
looks like to them
can you tell me the story of how you got
into non-profit management
so i'm a weirdo because unlike most
people i've always
known what i wanted to do when i was
in middle school and high school i
visited my uncle john
where he worked at the ford foundation
he was a
deputy director there and we walked
around this super cool building
and i learned that his job was basically
to support
all these amazing projects and the
people behind those projects
i was like you can do this as a job and
since then
i studied politics in undergrad
because that was the closest thing i
could think of to working in nonprofits
and eventually i earned an mpa which
i call the mba for nonprofits
a common thread throughout my nonprofit
career has been basically supporting
really neat ideas and the people behind
them
now as a leader at boot up i still see
my role as making sure our districts
as well as my colleagues have what they
need to do
awesome things and to use their
expertise
and enthusiasm to do awesome things
so connecting the two things the
district and
our pd facilitators and then stepping
back
and seeing what they do come to life is
what i love doing and what i've always
known i would like doing
so i'm wondering if you could talk about
the difference between non-profit
and for-profit organizations so
obviously there's
for-profit the goal is to make money
usually for shareholders and things like
that but
what are some of the more like
ideological differences that you see
between non-profits versus a for-profit
good question
so like you said the legal difference is
basically a tax thing
so a non-profit all profits need to go
back into the organization
one clarification i think some people
don't get is non-profits still
need to make a profit it's just that
those profits don't go to individuals or
owners
as far as the nonprofit field as a field
i see a lot of differences i'm lucky
enough
to work in a field where virtually
everyone cares about what they're doing
there's this culture of being able to
take strategic risks
and being a safe place to experiment
on things that maybe the government is
supportive of causes but can't be as
experimental as
non-profits in my experience
working on non-profits has been that i
get to wear many hats
and to me as a generalist that makes all
the difference so everything's project
based
no day looks like another and you have
to be really responsive to
change while still sticking to your
mission
and values i also wanted to add that
non-profits are a really cool space for
collaborating
it's sort of a non-profit mantra to not
duplicate
services and to share and collaborate
instead of reinventing the wheel
i think collaboration and being able to
learn from each other
and learning ourselves new things every
day is another
unique thing about the nonprofit world
yeah that's a good point i don't really
have
a lot of experience in corporate
environments but the
places that i used to work like when i
was a manager at blockbuster it's not
like we'd go to hollywood video and be
like hey how can we help you
when i was working as a stainer in a
closet shop we weren't going to
competitors and going hey how can
we help you make higher quality
finishings for your fancy closets and
whatnot so
that is a really good point because at
boot up in particular we're constantly
working with other organizations and
like hey
here's what we're good at how can this
potentially help you or what questions
do you have who can we connect you with
yes 100 one thing that you and i have
talked about before is
a lot of people ask or they tell me i
want to start a nonprofit
you know what advice do you have and my
advice is
don't do it you know see if it or exists
so i have a lot of respect for our
founder
ari because he did that due diligence he
did his research on what was out there
in our field and it wasn't until he
realized the need for district-wide
high-quality professional development
in elementary computer science wasn't
being fulfilled
that he founded boot up and he asked for
help
doing the research of what was out there
and at the elementary level
there were some really great ways of
getting started
that benefited like i've talked about
those early adopter teachers
you know so the teachers and the
districts who have the ability to
attend pd and to do the extras
so there really was a missing component
that was district-wide
that could bring all teachers along and
that was high quality
in that the pde would be over time
and it would really be a partnership a
commitment between the district
and boot up over the long haul to make
sure that the program
truly was sustainable equitable reaching
all students and teachers
yeah that was a really good explanation
thank you so
now that you've kind of explained what
the difference is between like
non-profit and for-profit
what made you want to focus specifically
on a non-profit
dedicated to education and why social
justice in particular
i've always felt strongly about this i
think it stems from
my relatives experience so all of my
japanese american
relatives like many others were interned
during world war ii
what i think is really interesting is
the president
and most americans were supportive of
incarcerating
this entire demographic based on what
they looked like
and so i think this history and a lot of
other american history has
perhaps oddly made me really deeply
patriotic
and to me patriotism means you know
supporting each other
so i would say that my relatives
experience and my
own experience has propelled me towards
non-profits and a career in social
justice also
i'd have a great immediate family who's
always spoken out against discrimination
of any kind
so i grew up knowing it was an important
piece
of who i am to answer the question about
education i know that education can
sometimes seem like the catch-all
solution for any problem but personally
i really do think
supporting public education can make all
the difference
in practical senses it's something that
should
reach you know every single person
in the u.s i'd really see it as
having the potential to be a true
equalizer if we were to support it
to the extent that it needs to be
supportive i was
lucky enough to go to a good public
school
and i have also had a lot of experience
working
in school districts and areas where
based on
your zip code your chances of graduation
are significantly lower so yesterday
when i interviewed joanna
i'm pretty sure she said she started
computer science classes in middle
school
so like having that kind of opportunity
in the 80s when most people didn't even
have computer science classes in the
high school like it makes a huge
difference
so what you're able to do in your public
education experience can have a profound
impact in terms of
what you do for leisure for career for
whatever i'm curious for you
what led to your interest into
specifically
a education nonprofit that focuses on
computer science
as i share with a lot of people in our
field i didn't know anything about
computer science or coding
until more recently basically until i
started thinking about this position
so i've always felt really strongly
about the digital divide
but i didn't quite connect the dots that
computer science
is the current digital divide until 2015
a computer science for all program was
implemented through my foundation at the
school district i worked at
that was the first time i was exposed to
computer science and i got to see it
first hand kindergartners coding
using code.org and scratch walking
around their classroom and
seeing them talk to each other be
creative
show me their storyboards and what was
inspiring them to make their story
another piece is that i'm just super
passionate as i mentioned about public
education
and right now i think equitable access
to computer science
is a huge factor in public education
right now
and and closing the equity gap one more
thing that i noticed since i have been
learning more about computer science
is that now i see it and use it in
everything you and i were recently
talking
how we can decompose and iterate
to become better leaders yeah
computational thinking in particular is
one of those frameworks that can apply
to so many different contexts so it's
interesting to
apply it to something like leadership
yeah once you connect the dots yeah
okay so you go into non-profit
management and you're doing all these
cool things
can you tell me a story of what it
looked like when
all those efforts that you put into a
non-profit organization when it actually
materialized
into something through a partnership
with a district or school so i
am very lucky i feel like i get to see
this almost every day
so to me whenever i see our facilitators
connected to a district and really
hearing them meeting them where they're
at
and giving them the tools that they can
run with to support their own computer
science initiative
to me is seeing my efforts and our
team's efforts materialize
another wonderful example is our
partnership that you and i are working
on with the wyoming department of
education
and american institutes for research to
me that's
sharing with a large audience how our
work terrier lies
into a great partnership so for
background
basically we are working on a project
together to create
culturally relevant curriculum you're
creating that integrates computer
science with
wyoming's new state indian education for
all standards
this is super cool because it involves
your curriculum
it involves our facilitators
professional development and
it's an instance where we get to work
directly with teachers even more than
usual
because we are requesting feedback and
letting their feedback
create real change in what we're doing
yeah in particular in the curriculum
itself
so typically like we get feedback after
every single pd but for the curriculum
it's like hey let's collaboratively
refine this yes so they're going to have
this great ownership over it when it's
ready
because of that let's say somebody's in
district and they're like okay this
sounds great i would love to be able to
work with a non-profit or
to be able to implement computer science
in my schools like
right now i'm just a single teacher
who's doing this in my class but i want
this to be
a district-wide thing so we can address
some of the equity issues
but there's no funding in their state or
in their
county or whatever so what would you
recommend for those educators who want
to get started with this
but they currently don't have funding to
support it
that's a good question and i get it a
lot
so my advice is usually if i could
encourage a district to do one thing to
really get started with computer science
in their district it would be
to find or recruit a champion in their
district who can really own
whatever this looks like to them so
basically this needs to be someone who
has the capacity and the time and
hopefully
the incentive or you know salary
basically to be able to run
with the initiative so the one who's
doing research to find
potentially ed providers or even to do
the pd themselves and bring it to their
teachers so
a big thing with me is finding a
champion for
computer science in a district and to me
everything else follows
okay so once districts do have funding
and they're like yeah we're totally on
board this is cool we want to do
something
how does that team then take things so
that it
becomes district-wide so in terms of
planning for and implementing
computer science beyond just a small
implementation
i've learned a lot of this from our
districts i mentioned that i get to work
with
all types of district leadership across
the country so to me
every implementation is going to look
different
so it's important for them to define
what their plan for district-wide
computer science
looks like i think you know me well
enough to know that i don't necessarily
there's
one correct way to do anything right
and so that being said i also wouldn't
recommend we come in and do everything
for them either
i don't think that that would be a
sustainable program
so yeah a district really learning what
their vision for computer science is and
there are some
great tools out there to help do this or
maybe that just means
speaking internally and knowing what
direction they want to go in and then
pursuing that direction
i've heard this from several different
people including professors and
other famous people and whatnot who've
talked about like the quality of the
questions that you're asking in your
life will have a direct
impact on the quality of your life
itself i'm wondering what kind of
questions do you wish
more administrators asked when
considering
cs implementation in their district and
how those particular questions might be
able to have a direct
impact on their district-wide
implementation
a big thing for any district focused on
equity
when thinking about their implementation
model
i would recommend that they ask
themselves who are we missing
what do we need to do to ensure that the
students participating
are either all of our students receiving
computer science
instruction equitably or that the
students that are receiving it reflect
your district demographics as a whole so
are we reaching
our students in special education are we
reaching
our students that can't attend an
after-school program
or who choose not to take an elective
the big question is
who are we missing as a district to me
this also means thinking about
more logistically who's teaching
computer science
if it's classroom teachers does this
mean that only their
you know 20 30 or so students will
receive computer science
or is there a way that we can reach all
students
one concern i often share with districts
when they're just starting out
and to ask themselves are you focusing
on
your teachers that aren't just early
adopters the one thing that makes
boot up special is that we're really
good at bringing
all district teachers along so there are
those early adopters who have gone above
and beyond
and have attended computer science pde
or other pd themselves in order to reach
all students
i think that means meeting all the
teachers where they're at
and bringing them all along together
district-wide and i think we're
very good at that with our district-wide
approach what are some things
that either you or districts have
thought like
oh yeah this would be a great idea for
our particular district but ended up not
working out
as planned one that comes to mind
is recruiting only
your most motivated teachers you know so
the teachers who often are
already the teachers doing everything
anything and everything
to support their students are often the
ones who also get
this new subject put on their shoulders
so i think
it is sometimes a mistake to start with
voluntary or to recruit
those teachers when to me it's much more
powerful
to do an entire grade level or to do an
entire district of teachers
so they all can learn and kind of
come up together as a cohort and your
experience
is both with boot up and then just
observing what's going on with
implementation across the country do you
have
any example case studies that you can
point to is like here's an example of
how one district implemented things but
here's another example of how
another district implemented things in a
different way i think every single
district
i've worked with has modified their
implementation
in a way that works for them so they all
have separate case studies
i developed this questionnaire that i
often share with new districts
and have done presentations of questions
to ask yourself
when implementing a computer science
initiative that kind of define
the different case studies so they're
questions like
what will professional development look
like will it be mandatory or voluntary
what will classroom implementation look
like will that be mandatory or voluntary
and if it's not mandatory how will you
enforce this expectation
the goal is to get district to start
thinking about these questions in order
to guide
the creation of their individual plan so
depending on what they answer
you know they can say you know no
professional development is going to be
voluntary
however we are going to provide this
incentive of such and such
you know or we are going to recognize
them at a board meeting or something
i often also engage them in thinking
about what curricula
and what platforms they want to use to
make sure it's something that will work
for them
and then who overall is supporting their
program
so based on the answers to these
questions i can think of a bunch of
different case studies
yeah and if anyone's interested in
exploring this more in terms of like
well i need to think through those
questions more cs for all has a lot of
resources that can help with that like
the scripps workshop as well as the
cs visions framework yeah which i did
two podcast
episodes on and i'll link to those in
the show notes but they're very helpful
for like thinking through
all these things in terms of planning
and implementation and whatnot
absolutely
so knowing you and having worked with
you i know that you are a very hard
worker
and are often working far more than the
minimum i imagine
and i'm curious how do you take care of
yourself
and try and prevent the burnout that can
come with working so much
that's a good question and i think i am
getting better
at taking vacations and making sure i
take time off or when i finish a big
project
make sure i celebrate that a little bit
before just
moving on to the next one i've actually
really liked
all of your suggestions from your guests
in these podcasts
i guess one thing i've talked about with
some of our staff is
how nice full day vacations and full
week vacations
are as opposed to just spreading out
time off you know in half days or short
amounts of time
it's really nice to completely get away
and focus on the other things
for a couple days i think yeah it's
important because
like you've said it to me where it's
like oh yeah like i had to work out
over the weekend so i'm planning on
taking like a half day or two
and then you have said well it'd
probably be better if you took like a
full day off
and then that way your brain isn't like
half committed to resting for
and half committed to working for most
of the day and
for somebody like me because my brain
won't shut off and i'm just constantly
thinking about work
it's a lot easier for me to take a full
day or a full week
my friends and family make fun of me i
have a lot of hobbies
so that for some people if it's a good
fit could be a self-care
recommendation what are some example
hobbies that you like to engage in
i personally have found it's really nice
to have like a tactical hobby
and then also a mindless hobby and then
also a hobby where you're learning
something
so it depends what mood i'm in depends
on my hobbies but
my biggest one is probably just reading
you know so i do
find time to read every day and i'm not
saying i'm good at any of these things
but i enjoy them
so a more tactical one would be painting
i grew up woodworking with my family so
i continued to
do some woodworking and projects in the
garage
my learning hobby right now is i'm
learning the
mandolin so taking lessons and i just
feel like it's so good for my brain
to be learning something brand new once
a week that really pushes my brain to
think in a new
different way so i love backpacking
mountain biking hiking when i have time
i feel like it's important to also have
you know more accessible hobbies
so that's kind of where some of these
less time-intensive
copies come into play i'm curious what
are your thoughts on
research that's missing in relation to
like district-wide implementation
of cs education that you're just like i
really wish we had more research on
blank more practical research applied
research
is always a need especially in education
i saw this meme or graphic
on twitter one time that was this
picture pouring out water and the
pitcher said research
and then there was this glass at the
bottom and it said
practitioners or education or something
and then it was doing that thing that
pitchers do where the water just
slinks along the bottom of the picture
you know and it's not going into the
glass at all
and to me that was pretty poignant
of how sometimes research and education
and teachers
are not communicating as well as they
could i know there has been great
strides
in this so don't want to ignore that but
i think it's probably always
a good focus yeah and you know that
that's one of the reasons why
every other week is unpacking
scholarship episodes trying to help
bridge that gap because i totally agree
there's this like
huge disconnect between research and
practice and then research and policy as
well
or even policy in practice and
scalability
right so one thing that's been important
in all of our research projects as you
know is
we haven't engaged in research projects
where we
as the experts are going into a single
classroom and giving the teacher as much
support as they need
you know and expecting that to be
representative of
if that program were school-wide
district-wide or
statewide right you know so i think most
of our research
projects and what we hope to learn is
what
impact can we have that is also scalable
yeah i'm curious what your answer will
be to this
since you know like the thought that's
going into like the purpose behind the
podcast and whatnot do you have
suggestions
or recommendations on how to improve the
podcast one thing i would love to hear
more about on the podcast and just in
general is
i'm really interested in learning more
about broadband and providing
access to the internet access to free
information
and i feel like it's really aligned to
our organization and our fields focused
on closing the digital divide
as well as you know above and beyond
that i think
it could be a game changer for education
for the us for equity i feel really
strongly about it but
i think i could learn a lot more about
it yeah that would be an interesting
topic to explore
so it was like a few weeks now i did a
call in to like state reps for csta to
just kind of explain here's the state of
computer science in arizona
and some of the stats that i was giving
the representatives that i was speaking
to the staff members was like
adequate access to broadband internet
and like that i wasn't even aware that
it was that high of a number
especially for teachers that is
interesting and the idea of 5g coming
and potentially making it so we don't
have to have wired connections
everywhere
and still be able to get good access to
internet in more rural settings
will be interesting to see how that will
change in the next decade or so
so where my people go to connect with
you and the organizations that you work
with
the best place to find me is probably
through
my work at buddha and with that that
concludes this week's episode of the
csk8 podcast
i hope you enjoyed listening to this
episode abby is a wonderful co-worker
and
is really good at what she does so i'm
grateful that she was able to come on
this podcast
if you'd be so kind please consider
sharing a review on whatever app you're
listening to this on or simply sharing
this podcast with somebody else that
would mean
a lot to me and it would help spread the
word about cs education
pedagogy research practice etc stay
tuned next week for another unpacking
scholarship episode
and stay tuned two weeks for now for
another interview
i hope you all have a wonderful and safe
week

Guest Bio

As the Associate Executive Director at BootUp, Abby Funabiki leads the PD team and partners with school districts across the country to implement district-wide computer science for all initiatives. Abby serves as a Co-Principal Investigator on a National Science Foundation award with three school districts on the Wyoming Wind River Reservation to integrate computer science into social studies and ELA, in culturally relevant ways. A highlight of her work is learning from the many educators and social justice advocates she surrounds herself with. Abby also collaborates with national partners like code.org and the CSforAll Consortium to help district leaders understand what is needed to support #CSforAll.

Abby has worked in the nonprofit sector supporting public education for over ten years. Most recently, Abby worked for the Park City Education Foundation. In Park City, she managed grants and awards supporting over 50 district programs, led fundraising campaigns, and analyzed data trends and key indicators to evaluate program performance and impact. In 2013, Abby led Park City School District’s rebranding project as their Communications Director and created processes for the newly formed communications department. Abby has presented at state and local conferences on district implementation models, data analytics, and fundraising.

While attending Willamette University in Oregon, Abby interned for the Willamette University Foundation and McCormick Foundation in Chicago. She played on the tennis team and served as Team Captain her senior year. Go Bearcats! She has earned a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Utah and wrote her thesis on nonprofit capacity building.

Abby is passionate about equity in public education and believes access to computer science during the school day can be a true equalizer.

Resources/Links Relevant to This Episode

Listen to the podcast episodes on the Visions Framework
- Advice for School Administrators Interested in CSforALL with Clark Merkley
  - In this interview with Clark Merkley, we discuss what Clark has learned over the years working with administrators across the nation who are interested in implementing CS education in their district.
- CS for What? Diverse Visions of Computer Science Education in Practice
  - In this episode I unpack Santo, Vogel, and Ching’s (2019) publication titled “CS for What? Diverse Visions of Computer Science Education in Practice,” which is a white paper that provides a useful framework for considering the underlying values and impact of CS programs or resources.
- How to Get Started with Computer Science Education
  - In this episode I provide a framework for how districts and educators can get started with computer science education for free.
- Suggestions for Starting or Expanding Your Program with Dianne O'Grady-Cunniff
  - In this interview with Dianne O'Grady-Cunniff, we discuss some suggestions for starting or expanding your program, as well as other topics for novice and veteran CS educators.
- The CS Visions Framework and Equity-centered Computing Education with Rafi Santo and Sara Vogel
  - In this interview with Rafi Santo and Sara Vogel, we discuss informal learning in CS, the CS Visions Framework, equity through social justice pedagogy, considerations for Integration, and much more.
- More episodes related to equity
- More episodes related to funding
- More episodes related to implementation
- All other episodes
CSforALL related links
- CSforALL.org
- CS Visions Framework
  - “CS Visions highlights the importance of core values when it comes to computer science education. Understanding different reasons for teaching computer science isn’t just important so that we can get other people to care about CS, they should also shape what computer science education efforts look like – who gets opportunities to learn, what kinds of things get taught and in what ways. Our values should be expressed in our practice.”
- SCRIPT Framework
  - “The SCRIPT — the Strategic CSforALL Resource & Implementation Planning Tool — is a framework to guide teams of district administrators, school leaders, and educators through a series of collaborative visioning, self-assessment and goal-setting exercises to create or expand upon a computer science education implementation plan for their students.”
Find other CS educators and resources by using the #CSK8 hashtag on Twitter