Coding class draws students to public library Thursdays

Jose Alvarez leads a Girls Who Code lesson at the Bristol Public Library this past week. | Donovan Wilson

Posted By: Donovan Wilson July 7, 2023

By Donovan Wilson

For the first exercise of the evening, participants in the Girls Who Code programming class at the Bristol Public Library divided into two teams of two and one team of three. One person on the team was given a picture that they then had to give the other person instructions on how to draw it.

Each team did this in front of the class and the results varied from spot on to borderline indecipherable, resulting in quite a few laughs.

The public library hosts Girls Who Code Thursdays, at 6 p.m. through Aug. 10 for a total of eight sessions. Even though the class is Girls Who Code, all genders are welcome.

The classes are taught by Jose Alvarez, or as the kids call him, Mr. Jose. The kids meet with him in the young adult section of the library and once everyone is rounded up, they head upstairs to the computer lab.

The Girls Who Code class welcomes all genders. | Donovan Wilson
Participants share their group work before the entire class. | Donovan Wilson
Students work together on a group assignment. | Donovan Wilson

Alvarez said that the upstairs lab in needed to accommodate a bigger than usual class.

The class is now working within the coding system Python and within a project about building a poem which is somewhat under way as this was the second session. Students covered four different lessons learning about variables in relation to coding.

Lesson 1 introduced the kids to variables and what they are. Lesson 2 explained how the kids can name their variables. Lesson 3 explained to the kids how to create variables that react to user input. Lastly, lesson 4 introduced all the different date types that the kids will encounter.         

In between each formal lesson, the kids would apply what they learned to their poem and start forming their first real lines of code.

Alvarez walked around and checked on the kids and assisted where needed, but, overall, they all picked up on everything pretty fast. By the end of it, they all had a pretty fully formed poem.

The last class had three boys and four girls. They all sat down at a computer and were given name tags to better get to know each other and began straight into getting logged in to the coding program. Quite comically, it took quite a bit to do this and a few of the kids even had to bring their parents in to help figure it out.

Next week’s class will focus on personalizing the poem to be more fun and vibrant using what they’ve learned and will learn going forward.

The point of picture exercise was described by Alvarez as a way to show the kids what language and communication is like in coding and how difficult it can be.

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