Animal tlatoque: attracting middle school students to computing through culturally-relevant themes

A popular approach to introducing students to computer science is to involve middle-school students in engaging programming activities. One challenge in such a program is attracting students who are not already positively predisposed to computing. In order to attract a diverse audience, we developed a summer program based on culturally-relevant themes that appealed to our two target audiences, females and Latina/os. This paper describes our success in developing and implementing a computing curriculum and recruiting materials for a 2-week summer camp integrating two themes, animal conservation and Mayan culture. Scratch programming was used to engage students in creating animations about animals and Mayan culture, allowing them an interdisciplinary experience that combined programming, culture, biology, art, and storytelling. Our recruiting efforts resulted in an application pool that was 73% female and 67% Latina/o, with only 6.5% in neither group. We had 34 students complete the program. Pre- and post- surveys showed that the number of students citing computer science as their top choice for a career doubled and interest in computer science as a career more than tripled.