CS42: K12 Outreach

"The enthusiasm the kids displayed was quite astonishing. It almost felt like we were what they looked forward to each and every week. "

"I found myself learning things I didn't know as I helped create lesson plans!"

"Sometimes, when a kid finished the assigned work, they would play around a bit with the code and end up creating some new feature in the games without any help with us (for example, when making a game where falling objects could hurt you, one kid made the falling objects spin, making them harder to avoid. We never showed the kids how to make objects rotate). I found this brimming curiosity really cool to see. It reminded me of the environment at Tech, except these were 10-year-olds, so it was even more impressive. Such interest in coding at such a young age is really setting these kids up for successful futures, so seeing this was like a validation of our work."

"I enjoyed being role models for the kids. I think being students just like they are allows them to better relate to us than to their teachers, for example. I believe this peer-to-peer relationship allows them to be comfortable in asking for help."

"It's always rewarding to have them grasp the material in the lesson plans you've developed."

"I definitely enjoyed seeing the joy the kids got from writing their own program. Seeing them all realize that they created their own working game is a good feeling. Overall, I think I really enjoyed just helping the kids and seeing some of them develop a passion for coding. I never had he experience to code until I was a junior-senior in high school, so getting to see these kids try it out much earlier is a good feeling. Some of the kids seem to really enjoy it and seem to want to become software engineers, and knowing that I helped them find that passion is a really enjoyable experience. "

"I enjoyed seeing the kids get excited about computer science and wanting to continue learning more in the future."