Journal: Week 1
This week was the first week of the actual program, which was really hard but so worth it because it was really fun too. We spent a lot of the time playing get to know you games and team building activities, to try and make everyone feel comfortable with each other quickly. The beginning of the week felt kind of slow, and I could tell the girls were bored because there were a lot of surveys and lectures. Even though the week went slow, I’m glad that we got all of the boring things out of the way so we could start doing projects. Once we started doing projects on Scratch, the girls were way into it. The best part of the week was when we went to Pinterest with another one of the Girls Who Code San Francisco groups.
Journal: Week 2
This was the first week of actual coding, and it went pretty well. The beginning of the week was hard because most of the curriculum was reliant upon robots, and the robots were pretty inconsistent. This made the beginning of the week frustrating because they couldn’t see the results of their coding, but halfway through the week we moved on to other types of projects and it got better. It was also really fun this week because everyone has gotten to know each other pretty well, so it’s not as awkward and quiet in the classroom. We also got a surprise visit from one of the curriculum writers, Emily. It was nice meeting with her and the rest of our teaching team because she had some good tips and advice for working together and managing the classroom. We also had our field trip to Google but it was pretty disappointing.
Journal: Week 3
Week two was pretty rough because python is pretty advanced, and isn’t learned easily, but they liked doing javascript a lot better. Javascript is a lot more accessible than python, so I think they understood the overall concepts of coding better and they also caught on to the syntax faster. By the middle of this week all of the girls were really good friends and quite comfortable with each other. This was really good for the group projects, but also made it harder for us to lead the lectures and discussions. It’s becoming harder and harder for us to keep their attention while doing slideshow presentations and introducing projects. It did get a bit better by the end of the week because we talked to our program manager, Liz, and she gave us some good tips.
Journal: Week 4
We had another week of javascript projects this week, and it was really cool to see how confident they become with their javascript skills. I think that they all like javascript a lot better than python because the curriculum wasn’t as rushed, and they have had a lot of time to understand and research the syntax. I’m getting really excited to see what they will come up with and accomplish in the final project weeks. We also had our trip to Facebook this week which was super exciting. We heard from so many great speakers, including the co-founder or Instagram and the Global Head of Diversity at Facebook. It was also so cool to be in one room with all of the other Bay Area programs, which added up to about 300 girls.
Journal: Week 5
This week was pretty good because it was the perfect mix of coding and other activities. As a teaching team we also started doing a lot of wrap up tasks like finishing grading all of the previous projects and doing some of the final surveys about weeks one through four. We had some advanced javascript projects, mostly about web development and jquery. They all really enjoyed making homepages and learning HTML and CSS. We also started leading brainstorm activities, which started off really hard. At first none of them wanted to share their activities with the rest of the girls, but on Thursday they all pitched their project ideas to each other.
Journal: Week 6
This was my favorite week of the program so far. It’s so interesting to see the kind of ideas all the girls would think of. They all came up with really good ideas, but it became clear which ones they would end up doing pretty quickly. Getting all of them started was really hard because all of the groups were starting to figure out what they could realistically accomplish in the next week and a half. Some of the groups are still in denial about what they think they can code, but they’ll figure it out soon enough. It was also more coding than they have done in any of the previous weeks. By the end of the week, everyone was worn out but I think we are in really good shape for our final week.
Journal: Week 7
This week was our last day of program, and it was definitely my favorite week of the whole program. Monday and the beginning of Tuesday were fairly stressful since that’s when all of the groups had to finish coding their entire project for graduation. I didn’t think that they were going to finish in time, but all of the groups actually finished with time to spare. Once we went into code freeze, I led a presentation and discussion about what the schedule for graduation is, what the order of it all is, and what their pitches should consist of. For the second half of Tuesday and pretty much all of Wednesday all of the groups made presentation boards, wrote their pitches and rehearsed their pitches. Graduation was amazing, and it was really nice to meet and talk to all of the girls’ parents, siblings, and friends. On Friday (the last day of program) we watched a movie in the Adobe theatre, and the kitchen made us a special popcorn bar.
Internship Reflection
Over the summer I was a Girls Who Code Summer Immersion Program teaching assistant at Adobe in San Francisco. Throughout the duration of the internship I had to use a variety of hard skills and soft skills. I think that the most important skills that I had to use were being able to program in python, javascript, HTML, and CSS. I also needed to know how to use Scratch, robots, and the jQuery library. Other than computer programming skills I used, I also had to be a leader, make and keep schedules, a mentor, lead bonding games, control a large group, and be able to make conversation and be a friend to any of the girls all the time. Another huge part of being successful in this position was being organized and on top of things. A huge chunk of my day was being the connection between either a student and Girls Who Code, or between Adobe and Girls Who Code. Therefore, I had to be checking my phone, emails, and a few different online teaching team resources throughout the entire day.
Every day I would get to the office at 8:30, and have a quick check in with Sherie and Gina (the lead teacher and TA). Then I would get out all of the laptops and write out a journal prompt on the board for the day. Then I would sit at my desk, talk to the girls as they arrived and take attendance. From 9:05 to 9:30ish I would call the girls who hadn’t arrived or contacted me yet. Then I would go over the projects, lessons, games, etc. that we would be doing that day while the girls all wrote in their journals and turned in their work from the previous day. Every day was different, but from 10:00 to 11:30 we would typically have some kind of powerpoint on a new concept, and scaffold for a project, and often times have a guest speaker. At 11:30 we went downstairs and had lunch. Around 1:00 we would go back to our room and either continue working on our project from before lunch or start a new project. At some point between 1:00 and 3:30 we would either play a bonding game, do an art project, or just talk and have fun. After 4:00 (when all the girls left) me, Sherie, and Gina would have another check-in about what went well that day, what could be improved, and make sure we are all on the same page for the next day. Also, twice a week me and Gina would stay until 5:30 to hold office hours, and once a week we stayed until 6:00 so we could meet with our project manager.
I learned so many things over the course of my internship, but I think that what really stuck out to me was the importance of networking. I met so many cool people on field trips, who work at Adobe, who came to speak, and the other Girls Who Code employees. I didn’t realize that meeting all these people who work in the field that I want to go into would be so happy and excited to get to know me and keep in touch with me. Also, that they would be so willing and even wanting to recommend me for other positions.
One example of an obstacle that I encountered during the internship was balancing being in a teaching role and being a friend to the girls. I was the same age as most of the girls, and even younger than some of them. I anticipated this possibly being a problem, because I wanted to make sure that I was all of the girls’ friends but also a teacher and mentor to them. It was kind of difficult at first to figure out how to make that distinction, but after the first week or so I figured it out.
I had pretty clear expectations of what the internship would be like since I was a student at the program the previous summer, but it was still more work than I expected. I didn’t think about all of the extra time I would have to be there before and after the actual program hours, or how much time I would spend at night preparing for the future lessons. Even though it was a lot of work, it was way more fun than I anticipated. I knew it would be fun, but the students we had in our program were so nice, funny, smart, and just super fun to be around that it was better than I could have ever imagined.
INTERNSHIP
June-August 2015