Beginning in 2013 Python student teams began designing and teaching their own unique six-week Python programming courses as outreach to students and teachers from South Fayette and visiting schools. Each year new students would create and test their ideas on high school students. By 2015 South Fayette had its first young woman, Ashumi Rokadia lead this initiative and it soon became clear that she had a different mission in mind. She wanted to get more young women interested and excited about computer programming. For this reason, she proposed offering a Python course for students in grades 6th – 8th. Ashumi’s instincts were right. She enlisted a team of five and they set to work teaching the classes. A high enrollment of 44 students made it necessary to offer two separate cohorts. There were 19 young women who enrolled in the course with several young women stating that they wanted to be “the next Ashumi” one day. One of South Fayette’s teachers took the course and soon helped facilitate the second cohort. Their course became an offering for the STEAM Summer Institute where they provided outreach to teachers in Southwestern Pennsylvania. This program became the precursor to the current 8th grade Python course that all 8th graders are enrolled in as part of the computer science pathway K-12 at South Fayette.
The district developed the new Python course through an incubator with the Teknowledge team from Carnegie Mellon University department of computer science. The South Fayette student team and the Teknowledge team with the director of technology and innovation joined forces and ran the course as a 10-week after-school program with 18 students. After each session the team met to discuss the successes and challenges of each lesson. After the incubator was complete a new iteration of the course was tested again at the summer institute and implemented the following school term.
To learn more about these initiatives take a look at the following articles published on public radio and as a webinar sponsored by Digital Promise League of Innovative Schools:
https://www.wesa.fm/post/students-who-teach-its-all-part-remaking-education-system#stream/0
https://home.edweb.net/webinar/research20181114/