Please Consider Volunteering For ScriptEd This Coming School Year

ScriptEd is a non-profit organization that equips students in under-resourced schools in NYC with the fundamental coding skills and professional experiences that together create access to careers in technology.  It brings its tuition free program directly to schools, where classes are taught by software developers on a volunteer basis. Classroom volunteers commit to teach for the entire school year (late September through late May) two times a week. Each volunteer is part of a four-person team, and is supported by ScriptEd’s staff members.

As the end of summer approaches, ScriptEd is gearing up for the 2016-2017 school year. The organization is looking for software developers in NYC to help to serve 900 students in 37 under-resourced high schools.

Volunteering with ScriptEd is a great way to meet like-minded people while increasing inclusionary access to the tech work force in NYC.

If this is interesting to you, you can apply to volunteer at this link: bit.ly/ScriptEdVolunteer.

A ScriptEd staff member will reach out and schedule a time to discuss the volunteer commitment further once an application is submitted.

#hacking education

Comments (Archived):

  1. Rob Underwood

    Last year I commented on a similar post about the amazing job Maurya, Becca, and the whole ScriptEd team do. Amazing organization. So I’m doing that again today here. ScriptEd, you are the best! Thank you for everything you do for our kids.And if you’re reading this and work in the technology industry here in NYC you absolutely should volunteer for ScriptEd or another of the great CS volunteer opportunities (e.g., TEALS). You’ll feel great doing it and make a difference. The kids are counting on you. That school you walk by every day on the way to work? Help out and teach CS.

  2. Mike Zamansky

    Scripted along with TEALS (https://www.tealsk12.org) are programs well worth supporting as both are important stopgaps until we can start producing full time in class computer science teachers.I’ve been told that TEALS has particular difficulty in finding volunteers to work in the schools on the fringes (geographically, but that frequently also means socioeconomically). I’d imagine that ScriptEd has similar difficulties.When checking both out, volunteers should be aware of a big difference between the two (at least unless things have changed recently).ScriptEd volunteers are basically the teachers while in the class while TEALS volunteers team teach with the regular classroom teacher.One model or the other might speak more to any given volunteer.

    1. LE

      It seems like TEALS [1] is available everywhere but scripted is only NYC? [2][1] And supported by Microsoft.[2] And the home page isn’t even super clear about that. (Especially because the team page refers to a member in the bay area)

  3. creative group

    Contributors:Off Topic Post: Hackers Claim They Have NSA Code for SaleHackers claim to have stolen attack code from a team of sophisticated cyber spies known as “the Equation Group,” widely believed to be associated with the National Security Agency. The hackers intend to sell their ill-gotten assets to the highest bidder in an online auction conducted in the crypto-currency Bitcoin. Although the alleged breach could just be an extravagant hoax, some experts who reviewed a preliminary data dump that was teased alongside a garbled sales pitch said the files look authentic. The assets include code allegedly designed to target firewalls and equipment produced by Cisco, Juniper Networks, Fortinet and Topsec, a Chinese firm. They appear to date back to June 2013, and names are consistent with NSA programs leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden that year. Source: Fortune CEO Daily (Allen Murray)

  4. jason wright

    As the end of summer approaches…

  5. sigmaalgebra

    Warning: This post may contain upsetting information about actual teaching experience.I’ve done quite a lot of teaching to college students and MBA students. Net, bottom line, teaching is usually a LOT of work.Even teaching just two sections, each with only about 20 students, that met just three times a week, of just one course, I never got the time below 20 hours a week.There is at least one exception: Freshman college calculus can be quite easy to teach. Why? (1) There are some darned good texts. So, basically just follow the text. For the tests, pick some exercises from the course text or another text. (2) The material is so definite, no ifs, ands, or buts, no loose ends, no deep complexities have to fathom, no tricky information have to dig out.Except for something easy to teach like calculus, to get down the required time, maybe have a lot of good teaching materials. Usually that would be course notes like a text book or on the way to a text book. More would be lots of exercises, some worked, some for the students to work. More would be old tests for the students to use for practice. More would be some on-line materials, say, Web pages, maybe with audio, or, better, still, video.Then for teaching computing, could use all of that plus computer documentation, software project design documentation, the software, the software documentation, the approach to the software testing, the code and data for the testing, etc. So, for all of that, there is a lot of, in one word, WORK.Maybe if for some one course had all those teaching materials, then the time per week per section of that course could get down to six hours, and that’s optimistic and doesn’t count driving, parking, walking to class, etc.Of course, for a course in computing, the students need computers, and then there needs to be some system management for that computing. E.g., for teaching programming, have to get the language documentation, the language interpretive processors or compilers, the run time libraries, any editor and/or integrated development environment (IDE) software, Internet access, e-mail service, data backup and recovery, hardware repairs, and system security. For Web development, need to get information on HTTP, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and then Web page design, Web security, session IDs, HTTPS, site authentication, etc. For more, may need to do much of the above for APIs, database software, various utility programs. And would likely have a LAN to manage. Could stay busy getting and keeping all that fully ready for the students!For some of the projects the students do, might want to have the students form teams so that they can learn some about how to work in a programming team — so need to manage the formation of the teams. Trivial? I don’t think so!Right, oops, we’re back to more than 20 hours a week again!I know; I know; have the second year students do much of that system management work for both themselves and the first year students.Bottom line, might want to scope out the amount of effort before promise to work from September to May!Uh, the traditional way of teaching, especially in technical fields, is for the students to have a book and the teacher to have some chalk and a blackboard! When that works well, part of why is some really good students!