When I tell people that I spent my summer working in New York, I’m often met with curious looks. “I didn’t know you were into finance!” I then clarify that, no, I didn’t intern at a hedge fund; I was a teacher.
The looks become more curious.
Maybe it’s unusual to want to spend seven weeks in a room full of high school girls. It could be uncommon to spend your morning assembling robots and editing lesson plans. Perhaps other people don’t walk to work with a backpack full of cookies and craft supplies.
It’s certainly impossible to love your job this much.
I joined Girls Who Code because I love coding, I love teaching, and I love the idea of a world where women help build the technology they use every day. Every day, I got to work with 20 of the brightest girls in the tri-state area. I was a teacher, friend, debugger, designer, cheerleader, therapist, role model, camp counselor, project manager, and big sister.
Thinking back to our first day, it’s hard to believe that most of these girls had little to no computer science experience. As one would expect, much of our time was spent working through logic, drawing flowcharts, whiteboarding code, and picking out syntax errors. Over the course of seven weeks, these girls spent over two hundred hours in the classroom and completed at least a dozen college-level programming assignments.
They researched and explained algorithms that I had never even heard of until college. They flawlessly coded solutions to problems I’ve been asked in job interviews several times. They even built their own apps in under a week, and then delivered startup pitches that could go toe-to-toe with the ones on Shark Tank. If I had a company, I’d hire these girls in a heartbeat — and they’re sixteen.
Beyond the technical knowledge, Girls Who Code wasn’t just about learning how to code; it was also about learning how to code together. There’s this stereotype of a programmer as a nerdy guy in a hoodie who’s glued to the six screens in his basement. While there are quite a few things wrong with that image, I think the biggest problem is that it reinforces the notion of coding as a solitary activity. Nothing happens in isolation; in fact, as we learned over the summer, the best things happen when you work together. Girls Who Code was a safe, supporting, and fun place to learn with people who shared similar passions. In our classroom, the girls relied on us, but they also leaned on each other for support. Though the bonding may have been forced at first (sorry for all the awkward icebreakers), we soon became a sisterhood of cyberwarriors.
Every week, we had the opportunity to talk with leaders in the technology industry, through guest speakers, field trips, or just by walking down the hall. We were so so lucky to have Marissa Shorenstein and AT&T host our program. Though we probably doubled the volume, tripled the chaos, and halved the average age of the office, we were always supported, mentored, and loved. Between the high-level executives taking time out to meet us and attend our graduation, and the employees who always stopped to chat, AT&T made it feel less like a classroom and more like a family.
Ask any one of our girls if her summer was easy, and she’ll tell you exactly why it wasn’t. Ask a teacher the same question, and you’ll likely hear that this is one of the hardest jobs out there. Attempting to cover a semester’s worth of college computer science curriculum in seven weeks has never been, and will never be, easy.
But was it worth it?
Definitely.
Our alumni are majoring in computer science at the best schools in the country and are interning at the most successful companies in the world. And best of all, even though our program is over, the magic doesn’t stop here. Between the amazing network of teachers who continue to dedicate their summer to this program, the alumni who return to help out, and the girls who go on to start coding clubs in their own communities, we’re all continuing to pay it forward.
I’ll end with a big thank you to the people who made this one of the best experiences I’ve ever had:
To Reshma, for being the reason Girls Who Code exists.
To Marissa and AT&T , for investing your time and resources in us. Your unconditional support is worth more than anything in the world.
To Robin and Jill, for being classroom moms, our #1 fans, and the ultimate problem-solvers. We wouldn’t have made it through a single day without your help (you literally fixed our projector on Day 1.)
To Noha Edell, Geraldine Laybourne, Anne Chow, Jill Reardon, Kirti Agarwal, Tamar Shapiro, and all the other amazing individuals who took the time to speak with us. Thank you for inspiring us, for showing us that anything is possible, and for fielding all of our incessant questions.
To Meg and Gina, for being the #dreamteam. Every day’s an adventure with you two, and I couldn’t have wished for better people to tackle this one with.
To my girls, for inspiring me every single day. You were the reason I woke up excited and went to sleep dreaming big. I’m already missing you, and I can’t wait to see how you change the world.
