If I were to describe my experience as a volunteer at Microsoft Social Catalyst & TEALS would be: rewarding. Becoming a Microsoft Social Catalyst & TEALS volunteer was definitely one of the best decisions I made for the 2017-2018 school year. As an enthusiastic of STEM education, I felt volunteering in this initiative was important as it relates to my main purpose of leaving a mark in my community.
As a volunteer at this incredible partnership with Microsoft and TEALS, I teach - along with another two student volunteers - Introduction to Computer Science twice a week to students from Las Artes high school, where they offer a unique learning environment for students from 17-22 years old. This school prepares these students for general education development (GED) testing and build skills to join the workforce after graduation. Since I teach an introductory curriculum of Computer Science, I do not use an industry programming language like Java or Python, but instead, Snap. This programming language is quite visual and easy to use by individuals who have not had exposure to computer science before since the user simply drags and drops the code to be executed. As shown in the following picture of the layout of Snap, the blocks on the left are basically lines of code that should be dragged and dropped on the area in the middle to show your output on the stage (blank area) on the right.
(Source: https://snap.berkeley.edu/snapsource/snap.html)
Throughout the 2017- 2018 school year, I have taught this course on Snap to more than 4 group classes and more than 25 students. To me, it has not only been important to develop the interest of high school students in Computer Science or technology in general, but also to offer tools and a new learning experience many students lack while growing up and attending high school. In addition, it was very important to me to become part of a group of people interested in investing in youth in order to provide a positive outlook in the tech industry by the future generations. I even felt some level of responsibility to reinforce to this community the importance of education and the endless opportunities they have if they put their mind and attitude in whatever they do. Working with these students and communities made me realize that it takes a high level of encouragement to demonstrate to them that they are as capable, as any other student, to accomplish any goal they set.
Experiencing their progress throughout the semester has been incredible. Transitioning from being clueless about computer science to being engaged with our lab activities and constantly asking questions during lecture was definitely great to experience to us as volunteers. That made us feel we were creating a great impact on those students, especially when hearing their comments about being interested in pursuing a college education.
(Volunteers, school teachers and students at Las Artes)
My goal as a volunteer was also to teach as much as possible to the school teachers (who are always present during classes) to ensure the Microsoft Social Catalyst & TEALS initiative becomes a sustainable computer science learning program. In general, it has been a great satisfaction to be part of this great initiative. Measuring our impact by the newly gained interest from our students in both Computer Science and technology has been incredible to experience. I truly believe the best investment in younger generations, especially the ones under-represented and undeserved, is in their education as they will define and shape how our world will be in the coming years. At the end of the day, it is all about helping change a student's life and prepare the world's future innovators.
(Group of Microsoft Social Catalyst & TEALS volunteers at Las Artes)
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If you have any questions about the program or questions about how to volunteer, comment below.
Mariana - this post was super insightful in how you can take an MIS career into the new and developing corporate social responsibility trend that is becoming an integral part of business around the world. Having planned several service events both small and large-scale throughout my life, I think this program is on of the most impactful. I like that you fuel curiosity and empower students with tools to do things they didn't think they ever would be able to - even I get frustrated with my MIS assignments sometimes because I feel like I am not given all the resources I could be to learn better. Thanks so much for this post, I'm excited to see the emergence of more programs like this in the near future!
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