Student-run nonprofit ready to teach coding to kids – Columbia Missourian
Coding had always piqued the interest of Yogev Angelovici and Zihao Zhou, but they never had a chance to dive into it before high school.
“I actually came from a pretty rural town in eastern Washington state,” Zihao said. “I ended up just exploring online on my own on my parents’ computer.”
Once they reached high school, they discovered that coding classes strengthened their academics and opened doors to new opportunities and extracurriculars.
When they stumbled across a nonprofit last year looking to establish chapters in new regions, it gave them a chance to give younger children the learning experience they never had.
Yogev, 16, a rising junior at Rock Bridge High School, and Zihao, 17, a rising senior, founded the Midwest chapter of Codivate about a year ago.
The Midwest chapter offers free coding and programming courses to students in eight states. More than 100 students enrolled in these courses last semester.
“Coding is becoming a lot more important in the professional world and academic world,” Zihao said. “We’ve gotten some pretty positive feedback from both students and parents about how much they learn through the classes.”
Codivate offers four courses for different skill levels and programming languages. The courses are marketed toward children in elementary and middle school, but older students can also enroll.
Nationally, Codivate has 11 chapters that teach coding to more than 450 students. The classes are all online through Zoom, a vessel Yogev and Zihao believe helps them reach more students.
The organization is entirely student-run with volunteer tutors who must complete an interview and screening process before they can teach a class.
Each week, about 20 high school-aged tutors with the Midwest chapter teach a small groups of students. Tutor Kat Crawford, a rising sophomore at Kirkwood High School, said the class size creates a more intimate classroom experience.
“I kind of got to know all of my students on a personal level,” she said. “More people felt comfortable turning their cameras on and really just engaging in a comfortable learning environment.”
Brothers Zain, 12, and Ali Khallil, 10, enrolled in Codivate courses last spring to build on their existing coding knowledge.
“We were programming websites before we ever heard of Codivate,” Zain said. “We’d never had a programming teacher, and we wanted to see how it would look like and what we would learn from it.”
Both brothers said they liked the intimate learning environment and the new skills they learned. The courses helped fuel their aspirations for the future – both say they want to pursue app development and …….