When the fifth-period bell rang, students filed into the basement of the Queens High School for Information Research and Technology to tackle the mysteries of computer science. The course, introduced only three years ago in the struggling Far Rockaway high school, has already broken some boundaries.
Two girls among the dozen students in the class dove into the lesson “Programming with Karel the Dog,” an online exercise where students give “commands” to an animated dog named Karel. After writing a short Java code on her laptop, Theresa Innocent, 15, watched as Karel the dog responded by walking across the screen. With some tweaks in the code, she could also make him jump hurdles and fetch a ball.
”You write something down and you see instant results,” Innocent said, as her classmate, Taina Olivio, looked on. ”That’s the magic of coding.”
Together with three other students — Cassandra Cornejo, Julius Spinner and Marc Santiago — the girls won first place in the Second Annual Queens Regional Hackathon held at LaGuardia Community College on February 7.
Their winning project began with the idea of fixing heating and boiler problems in the city’s public housing. Their win was notable for several reasons. It was the first time QIRT had entered the competition, and the winning team was majority girls, who tend to be underrepresented in the world of coding.
”I want them to know they can do anything,” their computer science teacher Jeff Kaufman said.
The school that shares the old Far Rockaway High School building with three other schools, serves 474 students, 27 percent of whom are English Language Learners — mostly new immigrants from Central America. In addition, a disproportionately high number (19 percent) live in transitional housing. The current principal, Carl Manalo, inherited a 55 percent graduation rate five years ago when he took the helm. The current rate is 81 percent.
One strategy in the school’s “Cinderella” turnaround, as Manalo likes to call it, involved enriching the curriculum and tapping teacher initiatives. Kaufman, the only computer science teacher at the school, was initially hired four years ago to teach art. He decided to take coding courses and eventually convinced Manalo in 2015 to bring computer science to the school.
The regional hackathon win came as a big surprise to the students. ”These kids, they’re not used to winning,” Kaufman said.
But perhaps none was as stunned as Olivio. ”I don’t fare well in competitions,” said the Queens-born sophomore. ”I have a lot of self-doubt.”
She remembered being utterly shocked when the word came. In the middle of the competition, Innocent’s computer had crashed. The team had packed their bags and wanted to leave before hearing the results, because they believed they would never win. “When we got the reports back, the jury said our team had the best team work,” Olivio said. ”We are all friends with each other, so we joked around. The other teams were so serious and intense.”
The QIRT students competed against teams that proposed grand ideas like building robots and mobile apps. The Far Rockaway students’ idea to create a website that identified heating problems in city buildings came from the life experience of Julius Spinner, 14, the only freshman in the team.
When he was younger, Spinner lived with his mother and older brother in homeless shelters in Harlem. “Some nights the boiler broke down and there was no heat or hot water,” he said.
Spinner coped by wrapping himself in thick layers of blankets. Sleeping in the cold continued even after the family moved to a private building in Harlem. “My mom made complaints, but no one did anything. She couldn’t buy a heater herself, because she had to buy us food and save up.”
Having a winning team with mostly girls is great, Kaufman said. It has been a high priority for him to get more female students interested in computer science. Girls are underrepresented at the school and also in the STEM field, he said. ”Whenever I notice they’re struggling with coding and want to give up, I try to find out if it’s because of gender stereotypes,” Kaufman said. ”Then I tell them it’s all noise.”
Women earn more than half of bachelor’s degrees in all fields, according to a report of the Science and Engineering Indicators 2016. But only 18 percent receive a degree in computer science, and only 5 percent of them are women of color.
”I’m used to people underestimating me,” Innocent said. But in her freshman year, she became known as ”Coder Girl” after she got a 99 in Kaufman’s class. When she was 11 years old, the sophomore started hacking into her own computer and phone to see if she could bypass security. She is planning to take Advanced Placement classes in computer science next year.
Computer science is the fastest growing profession within the Science, Technology, Engineering or Math (STEM) field, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 1.4 million computer science-related jobs will be available by 2020, but only 30 percent of those jobs can be filled by computer science graduates.
It’s an untapped field for talent. QIRT is among 2,000 U.S. high schools who are selected by Amazon for their Future Engineer program. The company recently pulled out of a highly controversial deal with New York City to build a new headquarters in Long Island City, which may or may not affect its commitment to the students at QIRT.
“There is no guarantee they won’t pull out,” Manalo said of the Amazon program. ”But shame on them if they do.”
This year’s hackathon theme was dedicated to using data analysis to tackle social issues, like the New York City Housing Authority’s heating problems. Teams were free to build websites, apps or even robots. At the competition, the QIRT students coded the prototype for a website on the spot and presented the importance of their cause to a jury. The website provides links to resources, which will make it easier for tenants to fix their building’s boilers if they break down.
“Being in Far Rockaway, a lot of people know what it’s like to not have access to basic stuff,” said sophomore Marc Santiago, 16.
His team was selected to compete after the school did its own hackathon last December. Students who excelled in computer science classes were especially encouraged to apply. After being divided, each team was assigned a different set of data to work with.
Santiago, who was not part of the winning team at first, used crime data from the NYPD to analyze rape charges in Far Rockaway. His team made a presentation on how the low rates of rape charges (1 last year) does not reflect the importance of the issue in the community. Even though the presentation took second place, Santiago was asked to join the winning team.
For the winning project, Julius Spinner was assigned to look at 311 data on complaints made in New York City. Most complaints were about noise, but he zeroed in on the heating problem instead. “I wanted to present a problem that was manageable and that affected everyone,” he said. “It’s easier to fix boiler problems than asking every loud person not to be a dick.”
The freshman wants to become a software engineer and eventually to own his own company. His dream is to attend Oxford University in the United Kingdom. “But realistically speaking,” Spinner said, “I’ll take any college that pays for my tuition. I’ll do community college for a few years, if that’s what it takes.” He is currently on the principal’s honor roll and he wants to get his average up to 100 before sophomore year.
Because specific instructions about coding were not given out until the competition in February, Kaufman prepared his students by giving them a “college-level class” on tenant laws in New York City. Teaching about social issues comes natural to Kaufman, who had a career as a NYPD police officer and criminal defense lawyer, before he took on teaching full-time in the late 1990s. Prior to coming to QIRT, the Cornell graduate taught social studies to student inmates at Riker’s Island, and Aspirations Diploma Plus High School in Brooklyn.
The five students are expected to compete against the citywide winners of the four other boroughs in April at City Hall.
“Winning the hackathon,” Innocent noted, “showed that girls can do anything.” She now has plans to study engineering after she graduates.
