1678_is = “inspiring girls through code”

Hello to FIRST Ladies blog readers, we are FRC team 1678 Citrus Circuits in Davis, CA!
Our Women in STEM Empowerment (WISE) initiative (explained in our last post) is dedicated to inspiring girls to take an interest in STEM. As computer science is becoming an increasingly important part of everyday life, we proposed a coding workshop as an extension to our WISE initiative, bringing an opportunity for students in our community to experience programming.

We partnered with the local Da Vinci High School’s Computer Science Honors Society (CSHS) whose goal is to make computer science accessible to everyone and where a lot of the members are also part of Citrus Circuits. We targeted 3rd through 8th grade girls, who have either never done coding before or only experienced block coding. Through this, we hoped to introduce them to Python, a widely used programming language participants could apply to real-world use, and get a taste of programming in the career world. Student volunteers from CSHS and Citrus Circuits gathered to create a basic curriculum for children who had never experienced coding before. We faced a challenge, however, as we realized how complicated coding jargon can sound for elementary students. To address this concern, our volunteers worked diligently to explore how those concepts could be easily explained through continuous revision and feedback.

On January 20th, 36 students eager to learn programming gathered in our local library, having the opportunity to meet fellow new programmers. Each volunteer sat at a table group, warmly welcoming the students. Laptops were graciously provided by the library to those who weren’t able to bring their own. As our main presenter led participants through the curriculum, students also had the opportunity to test the concepts they learned by having hands-on programming challenges, starting from how to print variables to creating conditional statements. Volunteers at each table group helped students one-on-one if any concepts confused them, as well as furthered their learning with more complex challenges. The finale of the workshop was a whole-group line-by-line input-based coding project. Hands shot up all over the room to participate in writing and debugging the code. Participants tested their skills by successfully creating a program that would ask people about their favorite food. As the students waved goodbye to the volunteers, we handed out certificates for completion of the workshop with helpful resources on the back for them to continue exploring computer science. It was a meaningful experience to host this workshop for girls in our community and collaborate with CSHS to organize a successful event. We hope it provided a great platform to introduce young girls to coding and inspire them to pursue future opportunities. The event also unlocked the potential of our partnership, encouraging us to envision future collaborative events and how our partnership might unfold to bring change to our community and beyond.

- Written by FRC Team 1678 Citrus Circuits’ Diversity in STEM team