Our first cohort – reflecting on the last 10 weeks and 15 months
When we set out to launch Boca Code over a year ago, we had a vision of what it could become and where it might be by this time.
Now that we’ve graduated our first cohort (see above), I wanted to take a moment to reflect on where we are, where we’ve come from, and where we are heading.
Last year, the largest struggle was obtaining our license from the state. It turns out that legally becoming a school is a different process in each state. California and New York are not without their challenges, I am told, but Florida is the single most difficult place to start a school. Legally. Who knew? Apparently everyone who has done it. I could have asked. Now we have our license. And only need to renew it every single year. A costly and time-consuming process.
The rest of the year was spent designing curriculum, connecting with key people in the community, establishing partnerships, creating our Boca Code brand (much thanks to CreativHaus, 2Ton, and Campbell Creative!), and our voice (much thanks to Shore 2 Summit).
First we started teaching our short courses which quickly became a hit, but we also figured out that some (like UX, React, and Node) are much more popular than others (Django) and that certain times (nights) work better than others (weekends).
But this January, we launched our Software Engineering Career Course. Because of frustrations with our license, we couldn’t advertise this as widely as planned, but we managed to get 4 amazing students.
As promised, we challenged them and pushed them hard for 10 weeks. You can follow the daily thoughts of one student on Instagram @Beccalytics where she wrote a short micro-blog and didn’t miss a day. Her daily ups and downs are exactly what we told the students to expect on orientation day and reminded them at least weekly thereafter.
Imposter syndrome is a serious part of learning to code. Any time we push ourselves past our comfort zone, we are likely to experience it. And since we spent 10 weeks regularly pushing students past the limits of their knowledge, they spent a large part of the class questioning whether they would be ready.
Like on the 3rd day of learning React when the students felt like they would never get it. And then I reminded them that they first saw React 3 days earlier… and two weeks later, they all felt like experts. And in week 7, when one student questioned how they would ever be ready for a real job after 10 weeks and we pointed out that they 2 weeks earlier they didn’t know React…
And it all culminated with the final 2 weeks of class focused on career skills like interviewing and their final projects. The students got to meet many of the biggest names in the local tech scene – people that often echoed similar sentiments to what we had told the students for the 8 weeks prior – ideas that were now beginning to make more sense. People that validated everything we were doing. Our instructors felt like super-stars.
In the final week, it was our students’ time to shine. They each presented their final projects, reveling in the profound applications of their newfound skills. Several of the projects would challenge even a more seasoned developer to create in under 2 weeks. They were really impressive and made us all proud. And impressed several of the hiring managers that were in the audience, virtually, or in-person.
We then had two hiring fairs – one over Zoom and one in-person. The feedback we got was overwhelmingly positive! And just a few days later, every student has had at least one second interview, some have had third interviews, and even gotten offers. And it hasn’t been a week since graduation.
