Today 2 of my kids (13/rising 9th grader, 16/rising 11th grader) finished their first week of Operation Spark's 1 month summer code camp for teens in New Orleans: https://www.operationspark.org/programs/highschool
I'm super grateful to Operation Spark and organizations that support them for providing code camps for teens. Even as a software developer myself I've struggled to get my kids involved in coding, all my attempts fizzled out after a day or two because it was a struggle to keep the kids interested.
Apart from code camps, AI helps a lot too - a few weeks ago my son's friend, who was already experimenting with Claude and Netlify to build and host websites, got my son interested in doing the same. They built a few draft websites for local businesses that don't have one, then reached out to the business and asked to meet about building them a website. Only 1 meeting so far, but the business owner was super-friendly and supportive and happy to work with these young high-schoolers.
So now I'm curious to see where they take this. Also, since I wasn't successful on my other attempts, I'm not sure whether to just sit back and watch or (try to) give them a lot of advice. I'd love to hear from other parents and educators of young coders: how best do you foster love for creating/building/collaborating in kids/teens?
