Kids Who Code
*THIS PROGRAM IS NOT CURRENTLY RUNNING BUT WILL RESUME IN FALL SEMESTER*
What is Kids Who Code?
Kids who Code gives BYU students the opportunity to mentor and teach kids how to code. For those with coding experience, this is a great way to give back your coding knowledge to the community and for those who don't know how to code, working with the young kids is a great way to learn! We currently volunteer at schools and community centers throughout Provo City with an emphasis on teaching low-income kids. With this emphasis, we believe that our program can help in making a more diverse and equal workforce in technology. Our Fall/Winter programs teach kids in 3rd-12th grades basic and intermediate Python. We are currently working on our summer programs. We need volunteers willing to work with kids of various age groups who are excited to code! We welcome all volunteers regardless of their background in programming, although experience in Python is a plus.
How do I get involved?
Thank you for your interest in volunteering with Kids Who Code. Please join our Microsoft Teams, that is where we update and communicate with each other. That is the fastest and easiest way to stay informed. Click here to join our Teams channel.
We need volunteers to go out with us to different clubs and facilitate an already created curriculum to help these kids learn how to code and build some awesome projects! The curriculum will be provided, and you don’t need an extensive background in coding to do this as we will have a main teacher with a coding background there. Come volunteer and learn how to code at the same time! Your role as a volunteer will be to interact with, inspire, and mentor the kids on an one-on-one basis as well as have opportunities to teach simple coding lessons in Python.
Volunteer Commitment:
We prefer that you can commit to come once a week for the duration of a semester so that you can gain relationships with the kids, but it is not required. We are happy to have volunteers whenever they can make it.
Training:
All volunteers must complete this MANDATORY 25 minute Minor Protection Training before you begin working with the children. Once completed, please download your certificate and send it to kidswhocode@byu.edu.
I love when people ask if kids are old enough to understand coding. They do! My favorite moment from teaching this past year was when one of the 5th grade kids had finished our coding challenge we had given and wanted something harder. I told her what a factorial is and she decided that she took that as her next challenge. With a little bit of help from me and a lot of thinking from her, she figured it out and had the biggest smile on her face and screamed with joy when she saw it work with any number.