Girls Who Code: The Lower School's Hit After-School Program

In a Whitby Hall classroom, Maya Popova '22 is finishing her shooting star, Lucie Gray Miller '22 is writing a "choose your own adventure" story, and Orowo Ogba '22 is building a random-number generator.
 
The projects are different, but each girl is using the same tool to achieve her goal: computer code.
 
This is Girls Who Code, an after-school program in the Lower School that introduced students to the idea that they can tell a computer, in a fairly sophisticated way, what to do—whether it's to draw a single die with two pips or send a dot of light streaking across a screen. No one in this room will become an app developer overnight, but NCS administrators and teachers hope that a glimpse of what's behind movies such as Inside Out or video games may inspire students to explore computer science further.
 
Given that women are woefully underrepresented in the number of computer science degrees awarded and less than 1 percent of high school girls express an interest in majoring in the subject in college, "I thought it was the perfect thing for an all-girls school," said Ali Skelton, the former director of the Lower School's Extended Day program. She arranged to add Girls Who Code to NCS's after-school offerings.
 
It filled within hours, a response that Lower School Head Rebecca Jones said "shocked" her, and a second session was quickly arranged. It filled up, too.
 
Why so much interest? Jones said parents were ready for this type of, er, programming at NCS. "Parents see where technology is going and want their kids on the cutting edge, to have the skills and be ready to go with them," she said. "The girls already spend time on devices, and parents ask, 'Why can't they take it to the next level?' "
 
Upper School math teacher Lana Conte, one of the session instructors, said Girls Who Code is designed to bring a student with no experience in coding to a basic understanding of Python, a language whose programs are generally short and easy to read. (Don't mistake accessible for simple, though: Companies that rely on Python include YouTube, Dropbox, and SurveyMonkey.)
 
Reworking existing programs—changing the color or size of an item—sheds light on how coding instructions are executed, as well as how the slightest mistake can break a program. The assignments gradually become more complex, but the curriculum allows a student to work through the lessons at her own pace.
 
About a third of the girls in one class said they began with some relevant experience, most through Scratch, a programming language designed for preteens. Lucie was one who did not, and she said it didn't hold her back: "You don't need to know anything to start. You pick it all up in class pretty quickly."
 
Conte, who has also taught computer science, pointed out, "Serious computer programming is really not for everybody, not because of intelligence but because of attitude. It's a very solitary activity, and you have to have the patience and focus to sit for a couple of hours to hunt down a missing semicolon. But there are so many aspects to computer science" beyond programming.
 
Girls Who Code was so successful that it will return next year, and Jones noted that several students have asked to continue with the program. Meanwhile, the Lower and Middle Schools are investigating additional coding opportunities for younger students. "We see the interest," as Jones put it. "Now we have to decide, Where do we go with this?"
 
by Scott Butterworth
 
This article first appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of NCS Magazine.
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