From South Bend to Bloomington, Code School is Growing
South Bend Code School co-founders Alex and Alex talk about the rewards and challenges of expanding to new cities
Since its founding in 2015, South Bend Code School has grown quickly and had the opportunity to expand to new cities. Now in its third year, Code School has a home in South Bend, Fort Wayne, Elkhart, and soon to be Bloomington.
Encouraging Young Entrepreneurs & Innovators ⚒
Liggins: Code School has been fortunate enough over the years to have met more people in other rust belt cities.
Bloomington is a city where it is easy to make connections with people who believe in the vision and importance of bringing coding to youth.
We wound up meeting quite a few people in Bloomington who were about that: they liked our model for Code School and were ready to jump right in. There wasn’t that much hesitancy. Instead, they saw it as, “we like what you guys have been doing in South Bend, and we think would be really cool to be able to offer a similar coding program to the kids here.” People who have that mentality have proven to be some of the best partners that we’re able to find because they don’t necessarily just look at the difficulty of spinning up a new program in a new city, but instead, are able to keep in mind the importance of the mission of building innovative program for kids.
Rapid Community Buy-in 🗝
Sejdinaj: The Bloomington Technology Partnership (BTP) was critical for this program. We presented the idea of Code School to them and they responded with, ‘how do we get this here?’ The Dimension Mill, which is going to be a new Center for Entrepreneurship in Bloomington, also thought this would be a great idea, as well as the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation (BEDC). These entities really wanted to make this happen with us. And I think that’s like Alex was highlighting before: a lot of community buy-in, and a lot of, “we all agree that this is a good thing — how do we bring this to Bloomington?”
Never a Dull Moment 📈
Liggins: I didn’t initially have expansion at the forefront of my mind, not because I didn’t think it was something that we wanted, but with Code School, things happen so quickly. There was never a pause to wonder, “what’s going to be next?” Instead, I think we’re pretty fortunate that everything just kept rolling. We did our first pilot program here (in South Bend) at the Robinson Center which brought on more partnerships with the Boys and Girls Club and the Juvenile Justice Center. Then we started our first open-enrollment style program, and realized, “Oh, we need a space, to be able to have classes!” After that we found ourselves getting laptops and making more curricula. And before we knew it we are making new contacts, in Fort Wayne and Elkhart and meeting those community partners who were like, “Hey, we’d help you to bring this program here.”
Sejdinaj: I think that this option for expansion, has come up a lot quicker than we thought it would in that, we meet people from other places, and they’re very passionate about the same things we’re passionate about, and they want to bring the program there.
Once you have some community partners, it really expedites the process.
At a certain point, it becomes like, “we’ve got everything we need in that community, and we have to take the jump at some point!”
Learning the lay of the land 🗺
Liggins: The challenges of expanding are getting the word out and learning the new area. I think it was a surprise to both of us that every area is completely different down to which marketing channels to use — even the way it seems like a community will interpret the wording that you use for a Facebook post, depending on how prevalent computer science is in an area. Having to learn what’s being done in schools has also been a hurdle because every area seems to vary so much, in terms of the way that computer science is being taught.
What’s been exciting though, is discovering that other people like your vision. That’s the most surprising thing, and I think exciting to me, because you’ll go to these different areas where you need not only parents and students, but community members and business leaders who like what it is that you’re doing.
The fact that there are people who want to help you to be able to get this program going in their city is really encouraging.
Sejdinaj: I’d agree with that. I think it’s sort of like the double edged sword of change. So exactly what Alex said: changing landscape of the community and trying to learn unique challenges to a specific community and also the change of having new students and new instructors. It’s challenging but also really exciting!
Code School Signups in Bloomington are now open. In our classes, students choose the projects they want to work on and learn at their own pace. Students are in classes with their age group (7–12 and 13–18) where they learn many skills anywhere from beginner intro coding games to coding & programming languages such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Python. Learn more on on our Website.
