Privilege Masquerading as Superiority

Last year while at the CyberTitan National Finals in Fredericton I happened to be standing by Sandra Saric, ICTC's VP of talent innovation, during a photo opportunity where the fifty or so student competitors were all together on a long stairway.  Under her breath she wondered, "where are all the girls?"  There were maybe three or four female contestants.  Sandra's comment resonated with me and I became determined to put together a female team that would get their own points and where no one is 'just a sub'.

CyberTitan and Cyberpatriot have doubled down on this focus on bringing women into a cybersecurity industry that has only moved from 11% to 20% female participation in the past five years.  For the 2018-19 season any all-female teams had their costs waived.  For a program that isn't rolling in support, that made a big difference and enabled me to pursue this inequity.

Graduating girls into non-traditional careers is an ongoing challenge in education.  Pushing against social norms is never easy, particularly so in our conservative, rural school where gender expectations tend to be even more binary and specialized program support significantly lower than in urban environments.  I've managed to have one or two graduating female computer technology focused students each year, but even that small step has only come after massive effort, and it's not nearly enough.  Even with all that stacked against us, we still managed a 33% female participation rate in CyberTitan this year, and of our six Skills Ontario competitors, two were female.  We're aiming to raise that even higher next year.

This year CyberTitan made a point of trying to address the very one sided gender participation in the cybersecurity industry by making the national wildcard position open to all-female teams.  There were only 15 out of 190+ teams in the competition, and our Terabytches finished in top spot.  We were delighted to discover that one of our boy's teams actually finished one place out of the top four eastern teams.  A number of people (oddly all male)  grumbled about the all-female wildcard spot, but the irony is that we knocked ourselves out of the finals.

Taking an all-female team meant that I needed a female chaperone with us.  Fortunately, our board's head of dual credit programming is a triple threat.  Not only is she very tech focused (her student just won top secondary brick layer in Ontario!), but she's also computer science qualified and an absolute joy to travel with (I went to Skills Canada Nationals in Edmonton with her last year), so I quickly asked her to join us when the call came through to bring our girls to nationals.  Not only did she not need coverage herself, but she kindly covered mine so my school literally paid nothing for this trip.

I like to think I'm pretty sensitive to gender roles in the first place, but taking an all-female crew to this event had me constantly seeing micro-aggressions I might have otherwise missed.  Within five minutes of picking up the Toronto (all-male) teams on the bus ride to Ottawa, one of them had intimated that we were only there because we're a girl's team.  Another later said that it's not fair that girls are getting special attention.  It must be tough when everything isn't about you all the time.  These comments were a daily occurrence from all the other teams, even the two co-ed ones, one of the girls of which said that she was just the sub.

That same Toronto team was able to attentively listen to a male speaker during the visits to cybersecurity companies in the Ottawa area after the competition, but the moment a woman stepped up to speak they began a loud and rude conversation among themselves.  I wonder how often these little princes (who did ever so well in the competition) have had their gender superiority enforced to develop such outstanding habits.

Walking in to the competition, our team had all signed in but one and as she reached for the pen a boy from another team stepped in front of her like she wasn't there.  Talking to Joanne and the team about it after, they shrugged and said, "you get used to it."  By that point I'd been triggered by this so much that my already light grip on my aspie-ness was slipping and I was starting to get right angry, but even that anger response is couched in a male sense of privilege.  When a man gets angry it's seen as assertiveness, when a woman gets angry she's a bitch, which brings up yet another point.

After fighting to get a team together against overwhelmingly genderized expectations in our community, and encouraging that team to develop a representative sense of identity in an overwhelmingly male contest, and then having to push back when the powers that be didn't like the name, you'd think this was all starting to get too heavy, but it has only clarified my sense of purpose.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if girls didn't have to get used to being invisible and could self-identify without being told what they can and cannot be called?  Wouldn't it be wonderful if everyone could be what they are and explore what they could be without some small minded traditionalist trying to put them in a superficial box?  When you push back against that social apathy you get a surprising amount of kickback from the people it benefits.  Ontario's current political mess is entirely a result of that conservative push back.

You even get kick back from the people it subjugates.  At an ICT teacher's meeting earlier in the year, a teacher from an Ottawa school said she would never run an all female team because it isn't fair to her boys.  Were everything else level, I'd agree with her sentiment, but in the landslide of unfairness around us, you'd have to be wilfully blind to ignore historically integrated misogyny in order to be 'fair to your boys'.  This teacher taught at the local International Baccalaureate school, which brings up yet another side of competition and privilege.

Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver... Fergus.  Your
usual expected centres of digital excellence.

We're a rural composite school that spreads itself thin catering to our entire community.  The major industry in our region is farming, we recently had our annual Tractor Day.  Our school contains programs for developmentally delayed students and has a sizable special needs student population.  We also manage to run a number of successful academic programs, but these are by no means our sole purpose.  Tech exists in there somewhere.

As far as computer technology goes, our lab is a room full of ewaste we've re-purposed to teach ourselves technology.  Thanks to some board SHSM funding and an industry donation from AMD we got the cheapest CPUs and motherboards we could find and put them in ten year old ewasted board PC cases running on ancient hard drives and power supplies.  My students have never touched a new keyboard or mouse in our lab.  We have to clear away our practice networks built of garbage because we have the largest tech classes in our board and province and we have no room in the lab to leave those networks set up with classes of 31 coming in next period.  I don't imagine any of the other schools operate in a similar environment.

We returned the board desktops in our room to the school who redistributed that money into other departments because you can't teach digital skills on a locked down machine.  We've received no school funding for the current lab.  Looking into the backgrounds of who we were up against in this competition, every other school is a specialist school from an urban centre.  In many cases they only teach top academic stream students pulled from other schools, and yet they can't put together an all-female team for this competition?  One wonders if those competition focused, talent skimming schools inherently encourage gender imbalanced technology with their incessant focus on winning.

We're built on sweat and tears.  Our disadvantage is also
our strength, but when it comes to competition it
gets frustrating not getting to run the same race
as everyone else.

The socio-economic side of privilege is every bit as battering as the sexism.  One of the little princes from Toronto was telling a Terabytche about his parent free March Break touring Europe with his friends.  She replied, "Hmm, I spent the week playing video games in Fergus..."  Last year half of our CyberTitan team had never left Ontario before, let alone had a week in Europe with their buddies.  The students who attend these specialized schools tend to come from economically enabled backgrounds and have parents looking to leverage that advantage.  The amount of support those wealthy families rain down on these specialty programs is yet another advantage we can only dream of.

Think the privilege ends there?  Because we cater to the full spectrum of students in our community, my classes are huge in order to reserve smaller sections for high-needs students (even though many of them also take my courses).  In talking to other coaches, my class sizes were the largest by a range of 20% to a staggering 50%, and their operational budgets ranged from five to twenty times what mine are; I teach up to twice as many students with a fraction of the budget in a lab made out of garbage.

We were surprised to learn that we would be beginning the competition short-handed because one of the IB schools had exams some of their competitors had to write, so to keep it fair we'd all start short handed.  Right.  Gotta keep it fair.

That these urban, wealthy, gender empowered, privileged kids are flexing that privilege doesn't surprise me.  That they continually complained about special treatment for a group of underfunded, rural, girls busting through gender expectations in technology, and who fought their way to these nationals literally using ewaste, only underlines the expectation that comes with their privilege; the expectation of winning.

In spite of these society-deep gender inequities and our specific socio-economic circumstances, the quality of my students continues to shine through.  Finishing fifth last year with only four team members and two broken competition laptops was just the kind of awesomeness I've come to expect from our kids.  It didn't occur to me to have the whole competition changed to make it fair for them.

This year we managed a ninth place finish out of ten teams, only beating the intermediate team who can't really compete with older more experienced teams anyway.  That earned another round of, 'you're only here because you're girls' from other teams.  After careful consideration I think my response is: if you came from where we came from, I wonder where you would have finished.

Is winning more about how you perform, or how you are economically and socially engineered to succeed?  I'd love to give gender and social equity to those complaining about our presence.  Having those boys experience people talking over them and stepping in front of them like they aren't there would be good for them.  Facing down gender based prejudice in an industry where women are a small minority is an act of bravery, not special treatment.  Wouldn't it be nice to bring everyone up instead of holding people down?  To do that we need to recognize what winning is, and how privilege enables it.

Next year we have returning students for the first time in this competition.  I'm aiming to put a co-ed team of our fiercest veteran cyber-ninjas together, build tech out of garbage and then win anyway.  Nothing gets me going more than an underdog fight against privilege, especially when those with that privilege like to selectively ignore it.

I hope we'll be back with another all-female team too.  Many of the Terabytches are interested in returning, but I can understand their hesitancy.  Working through this competition has challenged them in ways that were unintended.  If it was just about technical skill, then we'd have been much further down the track, but when you have to fight to be noticed and are constantly talked down to, it's exhausting.  I get why they might think twice about going through the never-ending online and face to face sexism all over again.  It'd be nice if other schools would pick this up and run with it instead of rolling their eyes at it.

Last year was all about giving the haves a black eye, and it thrilled me.  We didn't return home with a trophy or a banner, but we were running a different race.  I'm not even sure how anyone could make this an even race.  Teaching technology is dependent upon access to it, and the digital divide is deep and wide.  This year it was about something even bigger.  Yet again we came home empty handed, but I think what we won was worth more than any of the prizes.  I hope the girls see that and come back to defend their title.

An amazing opportunity and a chance to begin to create balance in an industry that lacks it.  Great work ICTC!

Playing To Win

Last year we were stunned to get an email saying we'd made it through to the Canadian national finals for the first ever CyberTitan student cybersecurity contest.  We knew, on the face of things, that we weren't up at the pointy end of things, though we had made big improvements as we came to see what the competition wanted from us.  We couldn't really understand how we'd finished top two other than the fact that there really weren't many teams in the eastern division.

CyberTitan is the Information and Communications Technology Council (ICTC) of Canada's national competition for Canadian students interested in developing skills in cyber security.  We've become so dependant on ICT infrastructure that it underpins many other critical systems like our food delivery, energy and finance sectors.  Yet this critical infrastructure is taught as an afterthought in Ontario's education system (even as it becomes instrumental in delivering curriculum in all other areas of learning).  Being able to secure and maintain ICT infrastructure isn't a nice idea, it's increasingly a life and death one.

ICTC's creation of the CyberTitan program is a forward thinking move.  With one of the largest job vacancy rates of any field and while other countries create military and civilian agencies to develop this new expression of ill intent, cyber security is being ignored at our own peril, but ICTC is trying to do something about it.

We went to last year's nationals in Fredericton and had a fantastic experience.  Three of our team had never left the province or been on a plane before.  The competition took a radical turn from the Cyberpatriot rounds we'd done previously, but we did our best and managed a fifth place finish being beaten only by teams who have been doing this for years through the American Cyberpatriot competition.

This year we hit the ground running in September.  I'd already arranged a senior team and an all female team, but interest was so high I took the hit and paid the late fee for another team of interested junior students before realizing my department budget had been eviscerated and this would drive me into the red.  Those students named themselves the Cybears and stunned everyone by topping our scores in the first two rounds of Cyberpatriot, the US run competition that CyberTitan follows in the early rounds.  Cyberpatriot tiers the teams after the two opening rounds and then pitches challenges to each tier depending on their ability.  Platinum teams are still in the hunt for the world wide title but lower tiers still get to compete for top of tier and wildcard prizes.

Since this was our first time seeing platinum level challenges, the State Round was a rough ride for our Cybears. They didn't manage to finish in the top 25% of platinum teams worldwide and as a result they are out of the semi-final round coming up next week.  Having to tell our strongest team that they are out wasn't easy, but it did shed light on how we got to nationals last year and how the competition is organized.

Last year we struggled at the beginning but got better and better each round.  We ended up Gold tiered and in the State Round had our best run yet, which is what got us to the Canadian Nationals - CyberTitan only looks at State Round results and doesn't seem to take tiering into account.  Platinum teams trying to climb Everest are considered on equal footing with Gold and Silver teams climbing Blue Mountain or a mole hill.  It would be like having some students write a 4C exam and others a 4U exam and then considering the grades as equal.

This led to an interesting conversation with the frustrated Cybears who, had they backed off on points in the early rounds would have landed in an easier tier and had a direct run to a top score in the State Round.  Do we play dumb and get an easier tier to get higher scores at the end?  That's the path we unknowingly took to the national finals last year.

In talking it through we all eventually came around to the same conclusion:  we go full bore the whole time even if it means a tougher time later on in the competition.  The goal should be to go Platinum and then qualify for the national semifinals and get through the hard way.  This puts us in the best possible place to actually win Nationals.  We could be cunning and play this to get easier tiers and game our way into the Nationals, but just getting to Nationals isn't the point, improving our skills and being competitive in it is.

Next year we're aiming to build an all-star team out of the strongest contenders in this year's three teams.  That team isn't going to try and game its way into a National finalist spot.  We're going the long way around, or not at all.  Meanwhile, our senior team got strong in Windows security management and thanks mainly to the scores of those Windows boys ended up finishing 2nd in Canada in the Gold tier.  Their Cisco networking and Linux results, while slowly improving, are way out of line with other teams around them, so they have an uphill battle to get the points they need to survive the semi-final round.  Since they're in the Gold tier the images won't be as hard as they might be, so points should be findable.  They've gotten better in each round, so a strong national finish is in the cards.

Our junior team is actually our girls' team. Most of them were grade 9s last year with only two in grade 11.  The contest stressed them early but they showed incredible resilience and adaptability, pulling themselves up into the Gold tier and finishing right behind the senior Cybeavers, 3rd in Canada in their tier.

Last year's nationals was a very male centric contest.  This doesn't surprise me as finding females willing to stick with digital technologies has been an ongoing struggle at my conservative, rural school.  The all-female staff of ICTC people at the Nationals noted the lack of female competitors.  Getting women into technology is an ongoing battle, but more than a wildcard entry, I'd love to see the Terabytches win their way into the National finals and be the first all female team to do it.  I'd then like to see them take a serious run at winning it.

Unlike last year when we built a team of graduating seniors who all left us for university, this year we only have one or two graduating seniors.  We have already seen a significant step forward in terms of raising our skills and knowledge of cybersecurity (all three teams beat last year's team's State Round score).  By being able to cultivate talent and build experience year over year, our future teams in this competition look promising indeed.

Two Gold Tier finishes in the 2019 State Round - nice to see!

The Cyberpatriot competition does a lot of things that align with Ontario's computer technology curriculum.  Joining it gives you access to Cisco's Netacademy while also encouraging focus on what to get better at quickly.  The maintenance work we do in Windows 8.1, 10 and Server aligns with Skills Ontario's IT & Networking scope, acting as a great review for our Skills competitors.  We struggle with Linux, but understanding Unix based operating systems is vital for web development, another Skills Ontario scope we're chasing, so getting better there is no bad thing.

With so much student interest, our successes to date, and how complementary CyberTitan is with our other activities, I don't see us dropping it any time soon, though it was mighty difficult to tell the hardest working, most focused and most successful team that they are out because they qualified too well.  Spending the $400 on registration and then another couple of hundred feeding my CyberTitans while they were battling in this cyber-marathon is also hurting now that I'm looking at an eviscerated department budget.

Friday, February 1st, while everyone else is writing day four exams thanks to some nasty winter weather, I've arranged to have all my competitors' exams bumped to Monday and we'll be in a six hour battle to see if we can win our way to the National Finals for the second year in a row.  I hope both teams show up ready to do their best work.  As long as we're running at 100% of our capacity, the results don't really matter, though when we're this close it'd be nice to win!

It looks like at least two eastern division teams are ahead of us
on points, so it looks like our 2018-19 CyberTitan drive is at an end.

As a quick follow up, it looks like we're finally out of the competition after the semi-finals.  The Terabytches did great work in Windows and Cisco, but struggled in Linux and fell short in the semi-finals.  Doing this round we've never seen before in the middle of exams made it very difficult for the everyone, but especially the juniors, to focus on preparing for semis.  The Terabytches (for the first time in the contest) seemed ruffled, making mistakes they hadn't previously when managing images and working within the competition framework.  The penalties received were all good experience though and will only make for a more resilient team next year.  Now we've seen what can go wrong, we know how to avoid it in the future.

The Cybeavers were as strong as ever in Windows, where they were consistently near or at the top of the country.  They struggled in Linux but came in at about the State Round average number of points in that category, so held their own.  The Cisco networking once again stumped them, causing us to lose places and ultimately fall short of at least two other eastern division teams, which means we're probably finished.

Creating senior teams that are strong across all sectors of the competition (Windows OS and Linux OS security management and Cisco networking) is going to be the goal for next year, and looking at our two junior teams, we're spoiled for choice.  Up until last year I was still getting bumped into teaching English and wasn't even a full time ICT teacher.  Computer science at our school is only a couple of sections and digital technologies in general struggle to reach a sustainable level in our building.  That our peripheral program in our rural school is able to produce results like we do is very satisfying and shows my students what they can do if they work together and apply themselves.  We'll keep doing that, one way or another, even if it means winning the hard way.  Next year we'll be doing it with our first ever veteran teams.

If you're trying to drum up interest in ICT in your school, this is a good way to do it!