PassionForCoding.org brings equality of opportunity to Software Programming
As a parent of three children of various age groups I’ve observed elementary school age is crucial for development of self confidence, long term preferences and hobbies. Moreover, with every year that passes by, starting around age 10, stereotypes start piling up, definitive perception of what is and what is not possible to achieve, based on self assessment of one’s character and talents. Therefore, it is very important for kids to open their mind to endless opportunities while they are still young.
I’ve determined a particularly large gap in regards to coding opportunities for elementary school students. As a Software Engineer with many years of experience and a lot of passion for coding, the subject is very close to my heart. There has been a big push recently for public schools to introduce computer science to their students as a core curriculum. However, what legislators and activists don’t always take into account is that many school districts are severely under-staffed, underfunded, and overcrowded. The teachers are doing an excellent job teaching our kids core curriculum, and also how to be decent human beings. So although it’s obvious extra curriculum coding classes/camps aren’t enough to get all public school students comfortable with coding, overwhelming the teachers with even more responsibilities also doesn’t seem like the right solution to me. The real solution is for us all to take responsibility for our children’ future. This is what PassionForCoding.org helps achieve, and we look forward to partnering with many other organizations that help our kids achieve their full potential through coding.
In a Nutshell, PassionForCoding is about volunteer software engineers sharing their passion for coding with public elementary school students in their classroom setting, in the form of 1 hour hands on workshops. Its purpose is to bring Awareness about how Awesome and Accessible coding is across all public schools in United States. The workshop is highly interactive and designed around the language the children can relate to.
Running these workshops has been a very rewarding experience for me, and I look forward to growing our volunteer community next school year. Seeing a spark in kids’ eyes when they get to touch a motherboard, or witnessing a 10 year old girl writing “Girls rule the world!” 10,000 times on a web page using JavaScript, or seeing a line of boys and girls alike taking turns writing code, or watching how proud they are to be in charge :-)
One teacher’s thank you note after the workshop:
“Thank you so much for sharing your coding knowledge and skills, the motherboard and Dash! The kids loved programming Dash, of course, and described him as playful, cute and funny, although they still wonder who Dot is ;~). It gave them an inkling of what goes into programming a robot & how fun it can be. The motherboard & brain they found very interesting and the name coding was intriguing. One student described learning about Javascript as “mind-blowing how many things went into programming a computer”.”
The program is currently active in one school district, and we’ll be looking to expand to more districts next school year.
