Today was the final day of Willston Web Coding Bootcamp as part of Comunidad’s Rising Leaders Program. 12 students made significant progress on freeCodeCamp's (New) Responsive Web Design Course throughout the week and took home donated laptops today to continue working over the summer. Students are incentivized to keep working, with prizes waiting for them upon completion of major milestones. One student even stayed up until 2 am this morning to keep working!
Here are a couple of photos from the week:
Students were inspired by the wonderful speakers who came throughout the week. Here are a few takeaways from the lunchtime speakers:
- Rebecca and Patrick of Comunidad kicked us off on Monday, and shared their experiences in the tech industry. Rebecca learned web design over lockdown and Patrick studied computer science in college and will be teaching CS at Gonzaga College High School this fall.
- Chris impressed upon us that “character counts” (pun intended?) and led everyone through an example where he used Python web scraping to solve a real life need. (I’ll be using what I learned from him to build a tool for students to compare their progress with each other this summer.)
- Aidan, Ms. Maralee’s nephew, shared from the heart, making sure students understood that it was ok and normal to struggle at times. He emphasized the importance of perseverance and also provided practical college and career advice.
- Dani, Jordi, Josie, Julia, and Tomi, came from MasterCard and seem to have found a great work-life balance. We learned that internships during college can really prepare you well for future employment.
- Albert, Ian, Katie came from Brazen to share about jobs in information technology and security. We also learned that a college degree isn’t always necessary to find a job in the IT field, since certificates can vouch for your competency.
Ricardo did an amazing job introducing speakers throughout the week and leading the panel today!
This week was a huge win for everyone involved! We will provide an update later in August when the program comes to an end. Thank you for believing in Willston Web.
