Coding league team in Independence gives children access to computer skills
Jake Burbank, a fifth grader at Ash Creek Elementary School in Independence, says he dreams of becoming a video game designer.
He plays so much, his mother limits the amount of time he is allowed to play. But the first hurdle between him and his dream job was that he didn’t know how to write computer code.
When the Youth Coding League team started up this fall at the Independence Public Library, Burbank was one of the eager dozen or so kids who showed up to learn how to code.
By the time the season ended in December, Burbank and eight other middle and elementary school students had learned the basics of coding and were competing in teams and helping each other.
“I liked it because even though nobody probably coded before, I felt like I could depend on them,” Burbank said.
It took years to get the program off the ground. And now they want it to grow.
“We knew the success that other communities were having with it,” said Kate Schwarzler, the executive director of Indy Idea Hub, which obtained funding for the coding program.
“We knew the accolades the program was receiving, and we just knew we had to get it here in the community, and we had every reason to think it would build.”
How to start a coding team
Coding is how people tell a computer what to do. Advocates point to the benefits of teaching children coding at a young age. They say it improves problem-solving skills and teaches math skills.
That’s why the Youth Coding League, a national nonprofit, was started.
Schwarzler has been to conferences where the Youth Coding League was a topic.
She wanted to bring it to Independence, but figuring out where to put it and how to fund it were problems.
To solve the first, Indy Idea Hub — a nonprofit that provides business and entrepreneurial support in Polk County — got a $15,000 grant from Oregon Community Foundations’ Thriving Entrepreneurs fund.
That money came this summer, meaning they didn’t have much time to find a place to host the team. That’s where the Independence Public Library came in.
“The library has good partnership with the city,” Schwarzler said.
Patrick Bodily, the director of the Independence Public Library, said it received a grant in 2018 that paid for laptops the children could use for Youth Coding League.
They started one team for fifth and sixth graders and another for seventh and eighth graders.
And such a team was a good fit for programming the library needed.
“I came here in June 2020, and we wanted to build up something more for that age group,” Bodily said. “Our preschool stories are great. We had 35 adults at a painting program Friday night. But what do we do for the middle school, high school kids?”
Bodily became the team’s coach, though he’s admittedly not the most tech-savvy person in the world.
Next season starts in January
The funding meant children were able to participate for free.
Bodily said by having the coding league program at the library, home school and charter school students participated, a mix he thinks might not have happened if a school district hosted it.
Like most of the children in the program, Daniela Garcia had never coded before.
“I was really interested that they had that, and I thought it could help me,” she said.
She shows off one of her projects called “The Kind Friendly Dinosaur.” Garcia shows how she used dialogue boxes and commands to make the dinosaurs interact.
The fifth and sixth grade team placed 22nd out of 47 teams from across the country. The seventh and eighth grade team, which consisted of one person at the end of the season, finished 14th out of 35 teams.
Bodily said his goal for the teams — called Indy Idea Central — was to not finish last.
“I think failure for us would have been if we never launched it or never tried it,” Schwarzler said. “So we have a small cohort that went through this time. I think the numbers will increase significantly.”
And it has funding to do it again in the spring. The spring season starts with a preseason match on Jan. 8, and they start competition on Jan. 16. The team is open to all fifth through eighth graders who can get to the library.
Bill Poehler covers Marion and Polk County for the Statesman Journal. Contact him at bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: Coding team in Oregon gives children access to computer skills
