Coding is a big hit in high school

Creation of an interactive cartoon Christmas tree with lights that can be turned on and off snow that to falls via mouse clicks is just the start for Cedar Grove-Belgium High School junior Sammantha Berndt.

She is one of several students soaking up the school’s new coding curriculum with eyes on a career in the field thanks to an introduction to computer science class, and she’s not the only one who loves learning the new language.

Students, teacher Brad Navis and the professional software developers across the country donating their time to help groom the future of their industry, give rave reviews to Microsoft’s Technology Education

And Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program.

Navis presented the program to the School Board last week with help from students and volunteers.

Each morning, students get lessons in Python programming language, which Navis co-teaches with professionals who attend online at 7:55 a.m.

Except Akash Kakumani, who lives in the San Francisco area, where it’s 5:55 a.m.

He said he doesn’t mind getting up that early to inaugurate teens into his world, and he has even learned from the students.

“I’ve seen all these high-schoolers grow immensely over the past few months I’ve been working with them, and it’s really rewarding,” he said.

“There are some crazy gifted students in your classes, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one becomes my boss in the future.”

For Navis, the program started on a whim.

“I’m really grateful that this was a piece of junk mail, literally, that I got across my desk and Chad (Brakke) also got across his desk, so I got two copies of it,” Navis said.

“Getting it from a new superintendent, I thought ‘OK, well, maybe I should look into this junk mail that came across my desk,’ but I’m very grateful that we did because this is by far leaps and bounds ahead of what I could have ever expected.”

The program, invented by a Microsoft employee in 2009, is free to school districts.

“There’s just that much of a need for coders in the industry, and that’s where the importance of this comes from,” Navis said.

For Berndt, the real-world application has been nearly instantaneous. She has already completed small tasks for her father’s company that uses code.

At the end of each lesson, students are asked to use their newfound skills to complete a creative project. That’s where Berndt’s Christmas tree originated. Another student made a project that allowed Santa and his sleigh to be moved around the screen with a mouse. Clicks would make Santa drop packages. Another project was a small Pac-Man game controlled with arrow keys.

“We encourage them to take these really large problems and break them into small pieces and do them one by one, and then improve on them as they go,” senior DevOps engineer Scott Millard, a 30-year industry veteran who started with Spotify and who recently moved from Florida to Grafton.

Before the students start their projects, they must present their plan to the class.

“The volunteers were so excellent because they were able to tie in exactly what they do professionally. When they’re tasked with doing something for their job, it has to be documented on what the plan is. So they were able to really draw meaning, why the students had to spend that time doing that,” Navis said.

While writing and editing code may seem like a lonely task with long hours in front of a screen, Navis and the volunteers are thrilled with what they observe during the 83-minute classes.

Students started by learning code on their own but quickly began to work in teams and help each other solve problems.

“If a team stands up here and talks about how they did something, another team might say, ‘Did you consider doing it this way?’ Sometimes the answer is ‘No, we never thought of that.’ Sometimes the answer is ‘Yeah, but we ran into this, this and this,’” Navis said.

“It’s really neat to see the voices that all of these students are getting that doesn’t really come naturally. They would prefer to sit there, be quiet, learn and get a good grade. And now they’re contributing and discussing and being part of that work.”

Principal Josh Ketterhagen has seen it firsthand.

“How Brad interacts with the volunteers and students — it’s organic and it’s pretty neat to experience,” he said.

“I thank Brad for taking the plunge. What we’re asking is teachers to take a chance here, and he did it.”

The students and professionals often share their screens, sometimes in breakout rooms for one-on-one learning. Between Navis and four pro volunteers — Microsoft senior software engineering manager Kyle Kamperschroer and Intel data science employee Eddie Mattia are the other two, who also both work remotely — there are enough adults to go around.

That collaboration, Millard said, gives students a good idea of what a career in software development might look like. He will jump on a Zoom call five to 10 times a day to troubleshoot programs.

For a few minutes at the end of each class, Navis asks the volunteers open-ended questions about their careers and lives to give students a snapshot of their possible future.

“And pretty much every answer is different,” Navis said. “I think what students are seeing is the lifestyle, what the work might be like. The ability to live in many different regions. It’s really pretty interesting.”

Junior Brendan Lambrecht said he has been interested in coding since he was a child and is thankful for the program.

“This opportunity has been an amazing privilege that I believe not many people receive,” he said.

More computer classes are on the way at the high school. The district plans to add Advanced Placement Computer Science A next year and reduce the introduction to computer science class to one semester.