Woodlawn High School Computer Science Mentorship Project
Teacher Felicia Palm Shares How Her CTE Students Mentor Younger Students by Sharing Their Passion for Computer Science
My high school keyboarding teacher was my inspiration to teach. Due to my success in a vocational class the previous year, I was placed in a keyboarding class and got to learn more about software. I truly enjoyed the lessons in the class and after undergraduate school, I became inspired to pass on my knowledge, just as my teacher had done for me. I benefited from so many of the skills I learned in high school like resume writing, data entry and other soft skills I have used throughout my life. I wanted to become a Business Ed/Technology teacher to be able to pass on these skills to the next generation.
Every December, my computer science classes take part in Hour of Code, and I am able to teach many of the benefits of computer science. I was assigned a different group of students and thought it would be beneficial for them to teach their own computer science lessons. In May, several of my Woodlawn High School Exploring Computer Science (ECS) students visited Huffman Middle School to introduce and teach mini computer science lessons. The students taught an Introduction to Programming using Karel on CodeHS. The middle school students did very well and were excited to demo their programs to the class. I was excited to offer this opportunity to my students and believe it helped strengthen their knowledge of CS and also piqued the interest of middle school students to future CS opportunities.
My ECS students truly enjoyed taking what they’ve learned in class and passing that knowledge on to the middle schoolers. We were excited to see that several students had been exposed to block based programming and were able to master the mini lessons quickly and accurately. These middle school students also helped assist my students with demonstrations and helped their fellow classmates. Overall, this event was a great success for all involved!
I discovered CodeHS during the pandemic and it helped me in a time where I needed to be able to deliver excellent lessons to my students virtually. One of my long-term goals is to serve as a teacher trainer for other CS teachers that need support and resources while teaching their classes. I believe CodeHS is an amazing program & I know that it has provided my students & myself with a tremendous amount of support, especially during the height of the pandemic. I plan to continue using CodeHS to prepare my students to teach CS lessons to middle school students each year.
The impact of The Inspire Fellowship was also tremendous. This fellowship allowed me to have access to a platform that made teaching computer science much more manageable. Collaborating with our teachers during our virtual meetups helped me realize most of us were experiencing similar situations and challenges. The knowledge shared was extremely valuable in furthering my growth as a computer science teacher.
Check out a video of Felicia’s CTE students: codehs.com/feliciapalmctestudentvideo
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Read more stories about how CodeHS Inspire Fellows have expanded computer science education to Black, Latino, and Native American students in their community!
