Teaching Python to kids

The combination of an "unsuspecting library employee" and a bunch of bored children has created a popular program using the Raspberry Pi and other tools to teach coding to kids. Qumisha Goss is a librarian at the Parkman branch of the Detroit Public Library; she started the "Parkman Coders" program and came to PyCon 2018 in Cleveland, Ohio to tell the assembled Pythonistas all about it. She also had some thoughts on ways to make the Python community a more diverse place, along with some concerns for her students that are much bigger than the diversity topic.

Coding for kids

Goss said that it all started when some other library employees mentioned that teaching coding was becoming popular and that they thought that a program to do that for the children who visit the library would be great. She agreed that it would be nice to have and she applauded them on taking that on. But it turned out that she was taking it on, though she didn't know anything about programming. They assured her: "You're young, you can learn it", she said with a laugh.

They started with Tynker.com and other Scratch-based environments. "The kids had a ton of fun". The first class had 26 students when they only expected 20; the next month's class was similar in size. But then they started offering the class during the school year and attendance started to trail off. She asked the students why; their answer was that it was "baby stuff" and they were tired of just moving blocks around on the screen. "They wanted to do something 'real'"—at seven years old, she said to laughter.

So she started looking into the Raspberry Pi, in part because the library administration was concerned that students might learn enough to start attacking the library computers. In "true librarian fashion", Goss read a lot of books; Python for Kids is one of her favorites. In 2015, she went to PyCon in Montreal and to the education summit held there. She got lots of good information along with a suggestion to go to PyOhio. She did that and recommended it: "Go to PyOhio, it's really great". From some of the folks she met at those conferences, she got some micro:bit devices: "I'm really getting into this now", she said with a chuckle.

The library also paid for her to go to the first Picademy in North America, which allowed her to become a certified Raspberry Pi educator. She went through all these steps to get herself to a level where she could get out ahead of these kids and "teach them something that wasn't 'baby stuff'".

Since that time, she and the kids have done all sorts of different projects. Recently, during Teen Tech Week, one of her students created a video game with her own images and set it to music, "which was really cool". Goss laughingly admitted that her project "didn't look anything like that".

Her students have also done a lot with Minecraft: Pi; "I'm sure you've heard this a million times: all kids love Minecraft". They start off by playing Minecraft, but that's just an enticement. After that, she introduces them to IDLE ("don't groan") and lets them program in their Minecraft game. That was exciting, in part because you could make flowing lava and exploding TNT. "I don't know why they never get bored of seeing things explode."

After that, the students started doing robot cars, but the program had expanded so she had students from ages six through seventeen. A hard lesson learned about six-year-olds is that they are not ready to learn about Python. One kid wrote two lines in Minecraft then ran off to roll around in the hallway for the rest of the session, she said. So she started having a "junior project" for the younger kids. For the robot project, the junior version involved building and coloring a paper robot that would have some LEDs added so it would light up. The senior project was building a robot car with a Raspberry Pi.

The next project they will be tackling is greenhouse monitoring. The kids will be writing code to make a time-lapse camera that will record the growth of plants in a mini-greenhouse. In addition, they will write code to record moisture levels in the soil.

Parkman Coders has been going for about three years now. She showed two pictures of participants, one from when it got started and one from last year. One of the achievements she is most proud of is that three of the students are in both pictures; there are, in total, six kids that have been with her since the beginning. One day "they'll be here, or I'll be working for them, or you'll be working for them", she said to a round of applause.

Diversity and beyond

She then turned to a big issue in the technology world: diversity. "How do we get women and minorities? Where is the diversity?" are questions that are being asked by many organizations. "Women and minorities are not unicorns", she said. They are magical, but there is no real mystery about what it takes to sustain them.

There are three basic things that it takes to sustain any great relationship, starting with "respect". It comes down to simply acknowledging that everyone is a human being and respecting everyone on that basis.

"Here's the tricky part", she said: engaging with these other people. That means greeting them, asking a question, and listening to the answer they give you; if they ask you a question, answer it.

The final piece is "value". People are not going to stay with companies or organizations that do not value them. "I don't feel valued if I make less money" than someone else doing the same work, for example. If you can stick with those three things, respect, engage, and value, you can attract and retain people

But diversity problems are just a "middle issue" for her. The big issue she wanted to talk about are those affecting her students. Poverty is a real problem for these kids; they are poor and they know they are poor. It really hurts their progress that their family cannot afford a computer so they can work on Python at home.

Even though she can help them get a Raspberry Pi, many can't afford the things needed to hook up to it—a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Or, worse yet, they don't have the internet at home. These are real problems that are much bigger to her than the diversity problems. We need to help minorities get to the point where they can even participate in our communities.

Illiteracy is another problem her kids face. She can be teaching someone to program and realize she needs to backtrack to make sure they can read properly. She had a nine-year-old come to her for help the week before her talk; in the process of helping him, she realized he couldn't read. She suggested that he use his last name as part of a username, but he did not know how to spell it. "That was devastating to me." She has already started working with him and enlisted the aid of other librarians in order to help teach him to read. "These are boundaries to them."

Hunger, crime, and violence are all things that these children experience. She has had students ask for snacks to take with them because they had no food at home. She has also been asked if she has ever been to jail; one child's cousin was headed there for burglary and the kid was wondering what jail was like. That is just a normal part of their lives, unfortunately.

The kids face a lack of resources and a lot of adversity, but that leads to them being resourceful and resilient, she said. That in turn leads to innovation, both for good and not-so-good. Detroit is experiencing a revival these days, which leads to lots of "cool hipster things" downtown, such as electric bikes. She learned that kids in the neighborhood were stealing lawnmowers and mounting the engines on bikes to create their own powered bikes. She was amazed that they could get that to work—and that no one has been hurt from what she has heard—though obviously stealing lawnmowers is not what she wants to see.

The library allows using its computers for one hour per day with a library card. One kid noticed that you can apply for library cards online with just a Detroit address. One day she noticed lots of kids playing games on the computer for longer than an hour; she realized that the kid had exploited the system to generate multiple cards that he handed out to his friends so they could play together longer.

These kids need an opportunity, she said. She is teaching them Python because it provides worldwide opportunities; "exposure to Python is exposure to the world". Learning to program is also empowering. The first thing many want to do when they learn to code is break someone else's code because "you are empowered to mess stuff up or to make stuff better". It is important that the kids know that they can do more than simply what someone tells them they can do. "You can use your superpower for good or evil, then we let them test it, but then we encourage them to do good."

At this point, the kids are mostly consumers. They all had a homework assignment to spend a million dollars, but they had to use some of it to go to college. They had to research what it cost for the college of their choice, but after that, the spending all looked the same: a house (usually a mansion), a car or two, a house for their mom, an iPhone, and several new pairs of shoes. She wants these kids to see that their goals should not be to own an iPhone, they should aspire to create a better iPhone. They do not just have to be consumers, they can be the next innovators.

The goal is for greatness, she said; these kids have it in them, but "they just need an opportunity to develop that greatness". She suggested that PyCon attendees not be selfish and to "cultivate greatness in others". She continued: "No one has ever become less great by helping someone else become great". That statement was met with much applause.

She also suggested asking questions if you need help and answering questions if you are asked. In both cases, though, you should listen ("don't hear it, actually listen and take it in") to the other person. Her personal favorite suggestions were to support public libraries ("we're awesome", she said with a laugh). Also, she asked the attendees to support educators and "support people, remember this is about people; what is Python without people?"

Her final suggestion was to "mentor someone". She suggested that person be "someone who doesn't look like you, someone who is from somewhere different than you—go out on a limb and help somebody else". With that, she was done with her talk, which was well-received—attendees gave her a standing ovation, no doubt for her work and her keynote.

A YouTube video of the talk is available.

[I would like to thank LWN's travel sponsor, the Linux Foundation, for assistance in traveling to Cleveland for PyCon.]