Learning to Code From Scratch
With a limited supply of working computers, one elementary school in Brownsville, Brooklyn teaches coding to the youngest students
Fifteen fifth graders lined up in front of Riverdale Avenue Community School’s only computer lab, waiting for their new coding class one February morning. Computer Science teacher Michael O’Gara greeted them with his signature collection of popsicle sticks. He gripped them tightly by the middle to disguise their bands of color.
One 11-year old boy in his uniform polo shirt smiled as he pulled out a red stick. Red meant he could get one of the 14 new laptops at P.S. 446, an elementary school in Brownsville, one of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
Another boy pulled out a black stick. “Oh no! Old!” he said, shaking his head, as he reached for one of the old laptops, one of 10 leftover from the previous elementary school that was shut down two years ago due to poor performance.
O’Gara said he uses the sticks to avoid fights over the new computers. “Some of the old ones are missing keys,” he said. “And their batteries die very fast.”
Despite the lack of funding for computer equipment, Principal Meghan Dunn strives to offer computer literacy to her 375 students, one-fifth of whom are homeless, and all of whom receive free lunch. Mayor Bill de Blasio’s new city-wide computer literacy initiative includes only 11 elementary schools this school year. P.S. 446 is not one of them.
“Many students don’t have access to computers outside class,” said O’Gara, a veteran teacher who taught himself how to code. It’s important to teach them computer basics, and get them ready for more advanced projects in middle and high schools, he added.
That morning, O’Gara was teaching fifth graders how to animate a character to walk across the screen. He showed his class how to create a character running from screen left to screen right while kicking a soccer ball.
This is the first year that P.S. 446 has offered computer science. All students beginning in second grade take computer science at least once a week, and learn how to type fast and correctly. Fourth and fifth graders have the option to learn coding.
Students do not learn high-level programming languages, such as Java, C++ and Python. Instead, O’Gara teaches them Scratch, a free, block-based coding that allows students to drag and drop different blocks. Each block is a command. Instead of typing in complex commands, to make a character move, students can choose a block that says “move,” enter the number of steps, and then select another block that says “wait.”
Teachers in schools selected for the city’s Computer Science for All program, a 10-year initiative announced by the mayor in September 2015, receive up to 100 hours of training. The mayor’s goal is to provide computer science for every student in public schools by 2025. As of now, only 246 out of more than 1600 public schools have been accepted into the program, including 11 elementary schools. The program so far has received $20 million. Participating schools are required to provide at least three teachers to oversee the computer science program, something Principal Dunn at P.S. 446 cannot afford to do.
She tries to make her limited budget work by sacrificing an assistant principal. She is still struggling to replace the old compuers and to find more books for the school’s recently opened library.
At P.S. 446, O’Gara finds it challenging to teach coding to children, many of whom are using computers for the first time. “Some didn’t know how to click on the screen,” said O’Gara who was teaching an 11-year-old boy how to drag the block.
That morning was actually the third time O’Gara had shown the class how to create the soccer-kicking scene. At first, he gave his class two days to finish the project, but only very few did it. O’Gara gave them one more day to complete it. He showed his blocks on the big screen, and walked around helping them individually.
Before teaching computer science, O’Gara had been a classroom teacher at P.S. 446 since 2012, when the school was founded. O’Gara pays extra attention to students who don’t have computer at home to practice. He brings his own Amazon Alexa to class, exposing his students to fun technology.
At the end of the class, still around half of the class hadn’t completed their projects. O’Gara showed several of the finished projects. A fifth grade girl made a character running across the screen to buy a piece of clothing. O’Gara encouraged her to experiment with the project, adding a t-shirt and making it disappear. Another girl, Ericka, created two characters: a girl named Alex and a horse called Mimi.
