Black Tech Philly Coding Cohort
Our way of giving back to Philly’s Youth.
Our Coding Cohort teaches valuable tech skills to High School Students and gives them an introduction to coding.
The Student Coding Cohort
Our goal is to meet Philadelphia's Black and Brown communities where they are and provide them with the educational tools and resources to help them attain digital literacy and careers in technology.
Our Why
Black Tech Philly’s coding cohort initiative is designed to engage young Black and Brown people of all ages with educational coursework and material with the purpose of teaching them computer science and tech career concepts in an effort to illustrate the great possibilities allotted by learning these skills, as well as convey the transferable nature of these skills to other industries and life overall.
Our Purpose
Through our programs, specifically our Youth Coding Cohorts, we aim to provide the following:
1. Making students aware of technical careers.
2. Providing students with the educational foundation to pursue technical careers.
3. Providing schools with flexible and customizable CS and technological curriculum.
Goals
Raise Awareness
Black and Brown professionals are severely underrepresented in tech, yet most of our daily lives involve technology. Without adequate representation in the creative and engineering process of developing novel technologies, we risk alienating communities and potentially misrepresenting and harming them.
We aim to make our communities aware of tech careers and educate them on how technology impacts their lives.
Provide Experiences
One of the most deflating experiences for Black and Brown professionals often happens before they begin their professional work. Finding your first tech role can be highly challenging, and due to implicit biases and archaic credential-based hiring processes, Black and Brown tech professionals can often find themselves in a catch-22 situation. Perhaps the most critical part of our mission, we aspire to assist tech professionals with landing jobs via our coding cohort programs as instructors and instructor assistants, as content creators for our programs and initiatives, or as contractors working with local companies via our program partnerships.
Promote Advocacy
Raising awareness is only one-half of our commitment to education. Advancing our communities through grass root action is paramount to our goals. We strive to be proactive in working with our local schools, businesses, and community leaders, along with local and state government, in an apolitical manner to improve the quality of life for all Philadelphians and develop our youth to engage in their neighborhoods positively.
Create Resources
We live in times where the information to attain higher employment is easy, however, not all can indulge in this information the same way - whether due to a lack of access to a speedy internet connection or internet-accessible devices, physical limitations such as hearing or seeing, or learning styles. We intend to create inclusive resources such as study documents and videos and host in-person and virtual meetings, presentations, and courses and we strive to equip our communities with many educational pathways to achieve their technological career and literacy goals.
“Writing code and seeing it work; it made me feel like a real coder.”
- Student at Boys Latin High School, Spring ‘2023
Our Coding Cohort Programs
Please contact us if you’d like us to bring a cohort to your school. We currently only service schools within the Philadelphia school system.
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These cohorts are ideal for young learners and has the lowest software and hardware requirements.
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These cohorts are ideal for young people who have no coding or some coding experience. This course has some hardware and software requirements.
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It is not required for students to have experience with coding prior to these cohorts, but it is recommended that students have some experience. These cohorts have some hardware and software requirements.
Program Types
Our cohorts are broken down into three (3) semester types: Full, Dynamic, and Seasonal. Our intention is to provide curriculum that can fit the unique needs and bandwidth of Philadelphia schools.
The Full and Dynamic Semester Cohort packages include Course Desk Access, Weekly Homework Assignments, Bi-Monthly Testing Assessments and Group Final Projects.
Want to get involved with Black Tech Philly or bring one of our programs to your school?
Our Partners
FAQs
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Black Tech Philly will provide the technical curriculum, a trained-instructor, learning documents and materials, such as lecture slides, in-class and take home assignments and test assessments.
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Our cohorts are lead by passionate local tech professionals who have met state and federal requirements to teach minors.
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The cohorts are designed for learners of all ages, more specifically middle school to high school students (grades 5-12). We offer a variety of introductory to advance cohorts but all are designed to be accessible; no prior coding knowledge or experience is required.
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We require a standard computer lab equipped with mac, linux, or windows operating systems. Computers. We also request at least one dedicated educator to be in the class during our sessions to assist with facilitating the class.
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We believe our cohorts provide a virtuous cycle of professional development to our cities technical workforce and youth. We employ local tech specialist to not only lead our courses and prepare our youth for the technical careers of today and tomorrow but also inspire our youth and give them a up-close and personal look into what working in tech looks like.
