By Cheryl Stern
You won’t often hear High Point alumna, Cyana L., using the adage, “It’s not rocket science.” This impressive high schooler returned to HPA this week to share her passion for this very subject with our junior high students.
As part of Computer Science Education Week, out 7th and 8th graders were treated to a special visit and guest lecture from three inspiring Westridge 11th graders. Cyana and her classmates, Isabella and Ray, shared their love of coding and engineering with their “Experiences in Programming” presentation.
These three students’ passion for learning was apparent as they took their audience on a spin through HTML, Java, and CSS programming, taking special requests from HPA students for text, style, and action changes that they deftly demonstrated on the fly.
Each of these young computer scientists began their journey into coding during 3rd or 4th grades, starting with Java or Python and moving into other programming languages as their knowledge base and curiosity grew. However, they assured their audience that one can jump into coding at any age; all it takes is the desire to learn – and a lot of patience.
Isabella explained, “You shouldn’t be afraid to fail. You’re not going to get it right on the first try.”
This spirit of determination has been their guiding force while building a flight computer from scratch in their rocketry class. They brought their hand-built computer with them to High Point and shared anecdotes about the arduous process of putting this complex puzzle together. While the hands-on engineering lessons they’ve learned are valuable, even more significant is the beautiful takeaway that Ray shared about the process: “You fail a bunch of times and you redo it… and learn, and learn, and learn.”
At High Point, our desire is to awaken the joy of learning in every student. One could truly feel the joy that these high schoolers experience on their educational journey, and we appreciate them sharing some of their knowledge with us!
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