Making A Big Impact on Students at High Point Christian Academy

Making A Big Impact on Students at High Point Christian Academy

Paige Daniels, High School Computer Science Teacher at High Point Christian Academy

Since Paige Daniels was in high school, she was always interested in computers and coding! Although, she realized very quickly when she majored in computer science in college that it was a male-dominated field. Unfortunately the tech industry still is today, which is something she hopes to change.

After graduating with a computer science degree in 1991, Paige worked at SAS Institute Inc. for 20 years as technical support for programmers in the industry. “I loved it! I’ve always been serviced oriented and enjoy interacting with people.”

Life changes took Paige and her family to High Point, North Carolina. While watching a local soccer game, the High Point Principal overheard her conversation with another parent regarding her extensive career in computer science. The school wanted to start offering a computer programming class, so they asked Paige to join their team. She was hesitant to accept since the classroom setting was a new realm for her. In her previous role, she helped teach and fix programming problems with adults, not kids.

With no high school teaching experience, she knew the solution was to find a strong computer science curriculum to help guide and develop her class. Paige was also concerned with all the steps needed to get the computer environment to run various applications.

After some research, she discovered CodeHS. Not only did CodeHS have great curriculum, but all you needed was a web-browser to run code! No plugins! No downloads! Every other platform she found required an extensive setup, except CodeHS.

“I found a diamond in the rough!”

Today, Paige is excited to be using CodeHS for more than 4 years! “The videos and exercises are so helpful and really facilitate the class. My students enjoy the hands on exercises and being able to see their progress immediately.” It’s a win-win! And, new curriculum continues to be developed by CodeHS.

Paige strongly believes in a collaborative learning environment. On a typical day in her classroom, Paige introduces the next teaching module on the whiteboard. Then, the class watches the CodeHS video together before breaking off to work on the exercises. When students are finished, they spend time helping others who might need assistance on a particular program.

For more practice, Paige will have students work in the CodeHS Sandbox and share their Sandbox program to the class. She has discovered that students really enjoy learning from watching how other students write and master their code.

“Using CodeHS has been so helpful since I am new to teaching. You have everything you need at your fingertips.”

As a teacher, her favorite moments are when students come into her class and have no idea what they are about to get into and end up loving it. Listening to Paige talk about her students you can feel how proud she is of the work they have accomplished, and new skills they are continue to learn each day.

After taking her class, two students have entered into summer internships related to computer science. Other students have built websites for businesses!

Many students have majored in computer science at UNC Charlotte, NC State, and other universities!

“Because of the courses they took in my class using CodeHS, they were able to enter the computer science careers immediately! The training they received in these classes taught them far more than they learned in their freshman college Java class.”