The End

This was the final week of the Summer Immersion Program. It was a week that flew by, only allowing me to process through pieces of my emotions (stress, pride, joy, and sadness to name a few) and experiences (the pressure of completing the projects, watching my girls present their projects and graduate, celebrating their accomplishments, and having to say goodbye) along the way. Continuing to work on my digital humanities project will hopefully give me the time and space to slowly reflect on this experience. However, what I do know is that the Summer Immersion Program has greatly exceeded my expectations of what I would learn and what my students could accomplish, and the final projects were a small representation of how this occured throughout the entire program.

"Preserve to Conserve" excited that new aspects of their websites are working!

The week began with intense busyness and some stress as we scrambled to finish the projects. For graduation on Thursday, the girls not only had to finish their projects, but also had to create poster boards and practice their presentations. Something that made the projects different from what I anticipated was my involvement in them. We were basically members of the different groups. Unlike typical group projects, which are done at home and not in the classroom, we were present while they were being made. This meant that we facilitated and participated in all stages of the project. From the creation, planning, and execution of each project, we knew them almost just as well as each student knew her own project.

As a TA, I am proud of how each project and the collaboration behind its creation reflect the Girls Who Code 4 characteristics of the learner profile that we stressed all summer - Socially Just, Emotionally Intelligent, Brave and Resilient, and Intellectually Curious. The way these characteristics were displayed throughout the entire final project process demonstrates how the girls grew in all of these areas.

Girls Who Code Learner Profile

This week was really busy for the teaching team because we stayed late to determine the best ways to help each group and create an environment where the characteristics of the learner profile would be able to grow, develop, and shine. As we were running between groups almost all day, we needed this time to discuss each group's progress and debrief on the day. For some, it was researching (free) APIs and resources they could include in their project, and learning how to use them. For example, I was really grateful that whole team stayed late one day to help me learn how to use the API used in the restaurant search. Like many of the big technical problems we faced, it was most effective to put all three of our heads together and learn from everyone's errors and correct attempts. For others groups, we needed to figure out how to improve their group dynamic. I then had to spend some time figuring out the best way to teach what I had learned to one of the girls. We spent a lot of time discussing how to do this for each individual group in the best, most effective way possible that needed the smallest amount of teacher intervention during the day. Due to this planning and the girls' overall maturity and otherwise natural inclination towards these characteristics, and we lucky to spend the majority of our energy participating in creating small features of their project and just spending time problem solving with them.

We saw girls be brave and resilient in the ways they dreamed up their projects. Across the board, each group showed bravery and resilience in their ability to not give up while troubleshooting. When I look at the final versions of the projects, I can see how much work went into features that can easily be taken for granted. For example, when I look at the drop-down menu on the Exercise tab of "Fitness Web," I'm reminded of how long it took before we figured out why the drop down menu always disappeared as soon as your mouse dragged over it. When I look at the buttons for "You Are Not Imagining It," I'm reminded of how long it took for us to get the buttons to line up in columns. In every bug in the code, the girls remained resilient in finding a solution, and we even managed to laugh along the way. Examples of bravery were in everyone who pitched ideas or made suggestions for features that they didn't already know how to make. In doing so, they were vulnerable in admitting they didn't yet have the solution, and already knew they were suggesting a task that would involve extra research and trouble shooting. For example, the girl who pitched the "Safe Space for Minorities" was nervous to pitch her idea, but was encouraged to do so by her classmates. Her original idea was to create a website with multiple chat rooms for different minority groups. She took a risk by pitching an idea that she didn't know if it would be possible. We ended up having to switch her original idea to creating one chat that everyone could use that would let them communicate with the creators of the website. In the entire process, their group remained positive and was flexible in creating a second solution to their original idea.

Final Projects Cruch Time

We saw the girls be socially just in not only the topics they chose to make their website on, but also in the way they treated their group members. While the girls got to rank the projects they would prefer to be a part of, the teaching team had the ultimate say. This meant that many girls had to sacrifice their preferences so that all the teams would be balanced. This also meant that not all the girls got to work with their friends. For some groups, we saw friendships that we wouldn't have anticipated form. In other groups, girls had to learn how to respect ideas and styles that were very different from their preferences. They learned how to differentiate between the parts of their project where collaboration and compromise were needed and the parts of their project where they could hold their ground and vouch for their ideas and original vision. One group had to work around multiple members of their group being absent for multiple days, and figure out how to make sure everyone's voices were being heard and represented while retaining the integrity of the project.

Outside the Bubble - Inspires teens to actively use their voice to help out not only their community, but also ones around the world. Its main feature is pages dedicated to different world crises, including information about them, links to articles about them, and ways that teens can get involved.

Fitness Web - Provides accessible resources for teens to live healthy lives. Its main features include exercise routines that can be done at home and are categorized by sport, music playlists to listen to during workouts, healthy recipe suggestions, and a restaurant finder that suggests restaurants with healthy options in the requested city.

Safe Space for Minorities - An online site where you can be who you truly are and no one judges you. Instead, everyone accepts who you are and the diversity you bring. Its main feature is a chat room where you can talk to any of its creators about things that concern you about diversity or rant about an experience you have had. Its creators are a diverse group of girls who will be more than happy to give advice or be a good listening ear. The site also includes several articles they have personally researched and included.

Preserve to Conserve - Shows data visualizations that raise awareness of pollution levels throughout the US. As data is so robust and difficult to analyze, it was created from the belief that visual representations make understanding statistics simpler and give insight to how much the environment is negatively impacted by bad air quality. One main feature is graphs of the Air Quality Index (AQI) of sample states, California, New York, Hawaii, created by analyzing data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.gov) and making graphs in Python. A second major feature is an interactive map of the US that reveals the AQI of each state capital.

You Are Not Imagining It - A website to educate people about microaggressions and create a platform for people to share their stories and learn from others' experiences. It was created from the realization that as time progresses and society changes, it is important to help eliminate the lack of awareness of micraogressions and inform people on how they are discriminatory actions that fail to treat everyone justly and equally. Its main features include explanations of what microaggresions are and FAQs about them, a page of stories, an interactive quiz, a simulation game created in Scratch, and a Resources Page.

We saw a lot of growth in emotional intelligence in they ways girls responded to constructive criticism, and used it as a catalyst for improvement from start to end. For example, when I look at the final fonts used in "Preserve to Conserve," I am reminded of how long it took before we finally convinced the girls that the original font the used was really hard to read and not professional. Additionally, the girls responded really well to feedback about their presentations.

Finally, we saw intellectual curiosity in the ways that the girls approached their projects. For example, we strongly encouraged that groups didn't use premade templates to design their websites so they could get the practice on their own, and all of the groups made the decision not to. We also asked that all the girls use tools besides HTML and CSS, and we saw groups use JavaScript, various APIs, and use Python to analyze a database and the matplotlib library to create visual representations of it. On Wednesday afternoon (the day before graduation), we had two girls from one of the groups stay until 8 to work on their project. As the girls don't receive grades throughout the summer or for their final project, I saw the importance of having a project that is personally important. It was the belief in the importance of their final projects that intrinsically motivated them see their projects to completion, and in some cases even extend their original vision.