Girls Who Code builds knowledge, sisterhood among STEM students

 

Girls Who Code is working to close the gender gap in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math). Despite the increasing reliance on technology, the gender gap has been growing over the past 20 years.

The seven week, summer immersion course is hosted by AT&T in El Segundo. The students range from girls who competed on their school’s robotics teams to girls with no coding experience, such as Rebecca Hochman-Fisher, an incoming junior at Palisades Charter High School. Despite the wide range of skill levels, Hochman-Fisher never felt unwelcome. Instead, the other girls were encouraging, she said.

“What’s good about this program is it allows girls to make mistakes. A lot of times when you begin coding, people expect you to be already good at it,” Hochman-Fisher said.

The camp teaches how to code and to build websites and apps. Instructors assign projects, but there are no set timelines. Students work at their own pace.

During the last two weeks of the camp, the girls were split into groups that created apps. One group made an app called Teen Connectory to help teenagers find jobs and internships. The other group created Political to people about politics by offering biographies on political candidates and providing a single source for multiple sources of political information.

Nataly Gomez, an incoming senior at STEM Academy of Boyle Heights, and first-year instructor Emily Newberry agreed that the relationships created at the camp are as important as the coding, itself.

“Yes, you’re learning computer science and coding, but there’s also sisterhood and the speakers, the whole community. That’s the biggest thing,” Newberry said.

Hochman-Fisher, Gomez, and Itohan Ero, an incoming junior at the California Academy of Math and Science, all praised the instructors.

“They don’t seem like teachers, they get along with us. They do help us but they really understand us. They’re really supportive and encouraging,” Gomez said.

Before coming to the program, Hochman-Fisher and Gomez were unsure of whether or not they wanted to pursue a career in technology. Now both say that they would like to.

“Before I took Girls Who Code, I didn’t really know if computer science was right for me, I was always kind of interested in it but I didn’t know if it was something I could go into as a career and spend the rest of my life doing. We were introduced to a bunch of careers that I didn’t know existed that I could be super interested in,” Hochman-Fisher said.

“I believe everyone should learn computer science. But girls especially, because there is such a gender gap. There are girls in my classes at high school, but the majority of my students are boys, and so many times, computer classes are geared towards guys,” Newberry said.

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