Service Learning Final Report

Parkview Elementary School Chico Unified School District

Joe Sarabia
Course Name: CST 361 Service Learning
Instructor Name: Dr. Eric Tao
21 April 2017

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I. Executive Summary
Parkview Elementary School is a K-5 STEM school, which is part of Chico Unified School
District. Nearly half of Parkviews student population is low-income and slightly less than half
of its population is non-white, with the 4th highest concentration of Hispanic students for
elementary schools in its district. Parkview also hosts the GATE program for 4th and 5th grades in
Chico Unified School District.
The Service Learner for this project, a former GATE student, and of Hispanic heritage, resides in
Chico near the elementary school. He has 18 years of experience working in the information
technology field in a breadth of positions and industry verticals, spanning both the private and
public sectors.
As part of this project, the Service Learner taught introductory programming skills to a 5th grade
GATE class that went beyond the limitations of Scratch and code.org which they had previously
used in the classroom. Prior to the commencement of the project, the students had expressed an
interest in being exposed to a more complex programming environment; however, their teacher
did not have a programming background. The Service Learner filled this gap with his project by
enabling students to achieve basic literacy in a high-level programming language. This project
was delivered in three phases which allowed the Service Learner to interact with a small group of
students, the entire classroom and the students parents to discuss programming, other select
computer science topics, and pursuing careers in STEM.

II. Agency Introduction

The agency that the Service Learner worked with is Parkview Elementary School, which is part
of the Chico Unified School District (CUSD). Parkviews address is: 1170 E. 8th St., Chico, CA
95928. Parkviews website is located at: http://parkview.chicousd.org/. The Service Learners
supervisor for this project was Tammy Janos, the 5th Grade GATE Teacher at Parkview. Her
email address is tjanos@chicousd.org or she can be reached by phone via the schools main line
at 530-891-3114.

As stated on its website, Parkview Elementary is a K-5 STEM school that focuses on Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics at all grade levels, beginning with keeping a science
and engineering journal as early as Kindergarten. Parkview also hosts the Gifted and Talented

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Education (GATE) program for 4th and 5th graders in CUSD. The school population is
approximately 420 students. Based on data from www.greatschools.org, out of 11 elementary
schools surveyed in CUSD, Parkview has the 4th highest concentration of low-income students
and 5th most diverse student population, with the 4th highest concentration of Hispanic students
(57% white, 27% Hispanic, 16% other; 49% low-income). Math and English scores for Hispanic
students are below state averages at this school, and while overall the test scores of economically
disadvantaged students are above state averages, there is a significant gap between the
performance of economically disadvantaged students and those students with more resources
who have 125% greater math scores and 108% greater English scores. Parkview states that
[o]ur Mission is to provide Parkview S.T.E.M. School students with a compatible curriculum
for a world that is increasingly dependent upon science, technology, engineering, and
mathematics.

In discussions between the Service Learner and Ms. Janos before the project began, it was
apparent that while her students have had an opportunity to work with visual programming
languages such as Scratch, they had not had direct exposure to developing code in a text-based
language, yet had expressed an explicit desire to do so. Ms. Janos herself is not a programmer
and does not come from a programming background, which is a gap that the Service Learner
helped address by introducing students to the fundamentals of text-based, high-level language.
This service was directly delivered to Ms. Janos 5th grade GATE students who had already
completed work in visual based programming languages.

III. Service Learner Introduction

The Service Learner for this project is Joe Sarabia. He lives at 1975 Lionsgate Way, Chico, CA
95928 and can be reached by email at jsarabia@csumb.edu and by phone at 818.264.9986. Joe is
a senior enrolled at CSU Monterey Bay majoring in Computer Science with a Software
Engineering emphasis. Joe has 18 years of experience working in the information technology
field, with a diverse background in network engineering, systems administration and consulting
with Fortune 500 companies as an employee of several enterprise software vendors, including
VMware and Amazon Web Services. In various positions throughout his career Joe has been

Sarabia Service Learning Final Report 21 April 2017 3

responsible for teaching adult learners to rapidly acquire new skills with technology and planned
to leverage and adapt this experience to teach basic programming skills to younger students.

IV. Project Description

As briefly described, while Parkview has exposed its students to high-level visual programming
using Scratch and lessons from www.code.org, students had expressed a desire to move beyond
the constraints of these tools and write actual code. The Service Learners solution to this
problem was to teach a four part introductory programming seminar to a focus group of students
using a combination of Python and JES and provide broader outreach on computer science topics
to potentially engage new learners who havent previously studied programming.
This project consisted of three main phases: one where the Service Learner interacted with
students and parents, one where the Service Learner interacted with an entire classroom, and then
one where the Service Learner interacted directly with a small, focus group of students. The
entire classroom phase was the initial part of the project. This consisted of two 1 hour
presentations to the students which discussed the Service Learners path to a STEM career,
discussed pursuing higher education, and finally covered some basic topics around computer
architecture, computer history and miniaturization and computer networking. The idea behind
these topics was to go beneath the surface with the students and give them a better understanding
of some of the internal workings of the tools and machines they work with on a regular basis. A
secondary purpose of this phase was to spark intrigue in students new to and interested in this
topic, with the hope they might either join the focus group later in the project, or even do some
self-study on their own. The second phase of the project was an introduction to programming
seminar with a small group of students. Most of these students had some prior exposure with
visual programming tools, even though this was not a strict requirement. For this phase, the
Service Learner selected Python as the language to teach due its relatively low barrier to entry.
Additionally, because the time was limited and it was important to keep the students engaged,
the Service Learner chose to use JES as the platform for the students to program on. This served
as a suitable intermediary between their prior visual programming tools and writing console
applications, the latter of which might pose an impediment to continued engagement. A
particular benefit of using JES is that it comes pre-packaged with existing functions that allow
easy manipulation of images, thus allowing for a quick time to doing cool stuff, and hopefully a

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higher rate of engagement, which ultimately was achieved. Additionally, because JES is free,
students may continue their studies after the seminar series has completed. In the final phase of
the project, the Service Learner worked with students and teachers at a STEM family night
function and answered any questions about what the students had been learning as well as
demonstrating some green screen technology, which could be implemented using what was
taught in the programming series.

V. Project Impact
The ultimate goal of this project was for the students to obtain programming skills and basic
fluency using a high level language and provide them the tools needed to continue self-study
should they choose to do so. The Service Learner evaluated student progress by their ability to
complete small tasks and exercises such as creating animations and manipulating an image in
JES in a particular way. One measure of impact was the level of engagement and interest
exhibited by the students in the focus group. 75% of the students were highly engaged and able
to complete at least 90% of the exercises during the seminar. The best measure of impact may
come directly from Tammy Janos, the site supervisor, who stated that many students benefited
from [the Service Learner]s presentations and quite a few have been inspired to learn more.
Overall she rated the Service Learners performance as outstanding, awarding him 54 out of 55
points or a 4.90 average per area on the Evaluation of SL Student Performance by Agency
form.

VI. Service Learners Reflections

There are two primary things that the Service Learner learned from the project. First, he was
surprised to see that the entire class had already had some exposure to GUI based programming.
Todays generation has fairly extensive exposure to technology. The second thing that he learned
was the challenge of teaching younger children. He had become accustom to working with adult
learners, so it was a very different experience working with younger students and adapting his
teaching style to their learning. Specifically, it needs to be more hands on and less lecturing,
which he found challenging at times with some of the concepts that were covered during the
project.

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The thing the Service Learner enjoyed most was when the students would quickly grasp a
concept they were covering and then use that to do new things. The students he worked with
were very quick learners, which made them enjoyable to teach. The aspect which he enjoyed the
least was the scheduling. He works full time and it was difficult at times to schedule around his
workday to go to the school to perform his service.
Overall, the Service Learner recommends Parkview Elementary as a partner. They were very
easy to work with, they were on top of the paperwork, and they were very accommodating. They
have a need for more volunteers with STEM experience who can work with students to give
them hands-on experience in various disciplines. The biggest recommendation was mentioned
above, specifically, when working with elementary school aged students, its very important to
incorporate extensive hands-on activities into any lessons and activities that are being delivered.

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VII. Scope of Work and schedule:

Date Time Activity Topic

02.23.2017 2:32p 3:31p Administrative Introductory Meeting
03.02.2017 2:25p 3:22p Administrative Review Initial Plans for Focus Fridays
03.04.2017 1:30p 2:30p Administrative Reviewing Paperwork for CSUMB and Chico USD
03.05.2017 7:00p 7:33p Preparation Reviewing code.org Activities
03.06.2017 2:25p 3:27p Administrative Executed Paperwork for CSUMB and Chico USD
03.07.2017 7:00p 9:00p Preparation Lesson Preparation for 3/8 Full Class Meeting
Presentation on STEM Careers and Computer
03.08.2017 11:00a 12:29p Delivery Architecture

03.09.2017 7:00p 9:00p Preparation Lesson Preparation for 3/10 Class Meeting
03.10.2017 11:00a 12:30p Delivery Focus Friday 1: Intro to Python
03.28.2017 7:00p 8:30p Preparation Lesson Preparation for 3/29 Full Class Meeting
Presentation on History of Computers and Computer
03.29.2017 11:00a 12:30p Delivery Networking

03.30.2017 5:30p 9:00p Delivery STEM Family Night Green Screen Demonstration
03.30.2017 9:00p 10:00p Preparation Lesson Preparation for 3/31 Class Meeting
03.31.2017 11:00a 12:30p Delivery Focus Friday 2: Intro to JES and Drawing Turtles
04.06.2017 7:00p 9:00p Preparation Lesson Preparation for 4/7 Class Meeting

04.07.2017 8:00a 9:00a Preparation Lesson Preparation for 4/7 Class Meeting
04.20.2017 9:00p 10:00p Administrative Filling out Final Paperwork
04.20.2017 10:00p 11:30p Preparation Lesson Preparation for 4/21 Class Meeting
04.21.2017 8:00a 9:00a Preparation Lesson Preparation for 4/21 Class Meeting
Focus Friday 3: JES Continued, Intro to Image
04.21.2017 11:00a 12:30p Delivery Processing
04.21.2017 2:25p 3:25p Administrative Completing Final Paperwork

Time Estimates/Actuals:
Classroom Activity Preparation:
Estimated: 3 hours per activity
Actual: 2.08 hours per activity
Classroom Activity Delivery:
Estimated: 1 hour per activity
Actual: 1.5 hours per activity

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Total Classroom Activities:
Estimated: 7
Actual: 6
Total Classroom Activity Time:
Estimated: 28 hours
Actual: 21.5 hours
STEM Family Night:
Estimated: 3 hours
Actual: 3.5 hours
Administrative Activities (Meetings/Paperwork/Project Review w/Partner):
Estimated: 4 hours
Actual: 6 hours
Total Project Time:
Estimated: 35 hours
Actual: 31 hours

Budget and Resources:

(5) Workstations for students Provided by Parkview
JES To be installed on workstations by the Service Learner prior to 03.10.2017
(1) Projector for classroom presentations Provided by Parkview

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