About

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Groups

  • Johns Hopkins University

  • Community Impact Internships Program

  • Center for Social Concern

  • CIIP Extension

  • CSC Student Organizations

  • Thread (Homewood Campus)

  • CIIP 2021

  • Impacts

    CIIP Blogs (Summer 2021)

    Overall, it has been a joy to work for Code in the Schools again this summer. I have been able to play a major part in the administrative side of CodeWorks, Code in the Schools’ flagship summer program. I helped with, and was often in charge of, one of the most important tasks for the administrative team of CodeWorks, keeping track of the youth's hours worked and making sure the youth get paid. This resulted in me logging and crosschecking hours of work for 120+ youth on the YouthWorks website. I also had to track hours on the Baltimore Promise website for funders of our program. Furthermore, when there were any issues with or adjustments needed for youth payroll, a lot of correspondence between parents and youth and tech managers went through me. Beyond communication about payroll, serving in the experience coordinator aspect, I was a point person for youth to talk to about absences, not turning in work, work etiquette, and other barriers or obstacles that might lead them to being terminated from the program. I often helped with any large scale or full group meetings in our main Gather Town space or with Zoom by helping set up the space and/or helping host by playing music in breaks, addressing youth as they are coming in, monitoring inquiries and discussions in chat, sharing links & resources in chat, helping presenters get set up, etc. When there were forms that needed to be created to track feedback, discrepancies, or other issues or data, that usually fell on me to handle. Lastly, I would just fill in the gaps when needed, whether it be leading an afternoon meeting, covering for an instructor in a class, troubleshooting accessing a space with a youth, etc. All in all, working at Code in the Schools has just been a great opportunity for me grow as a person, coworker, employee, teacher, and friend. Pretty much all my time at Code in the Schools was during the pandemic but I was able to be super adaptable and help an awesome organization in Baltimore thrive in a period that presented challenges we have never seen before.

    Made an impact between 07/21/2021 and 07/26/2021 with Center for Social Concern, Code in the Schools, Community Impact Internships Program, Johns Hopkins University
    CIIP Blogs (Summer 2021)

    This week was a lot smoother than previous weeks. The YouthWorks website was finally working like how it should be for the most part, barring some sign in issues, so that helped a lot. I feel like I am getting much better at communicating with instructors and getting help from them. This was probably my best week in a supervising capacity. I was able to get all the attendance in on time, barely, but I felt very relieved to do it because YouthWorks moved up the deadline. Additionally, I learned a whole new feature of google forms and think the feedback form I made was the best feedback form I ever made. The financial literacy with Ms. Aneka Winstead from WATT Kids was great again and the youth were super engaged again. The session Friday afternoon led by our CEO, Ms. Gretchen LeGrand, went really smoothly too. The youth enjoyed the music I was playing as I was cohosting for the session and seemed to like the presentation a lot. Overall, I just enjoyed all the interactions we had with the youth and liked having a very successful week. The only tough part of this week was that even though a heavy majority of the youth were enjoying the CodeWorks program there were a couple that basically told me that they were willing to be terminated from the program and did not want to participate anymore. For me it is very disheartening to see that, especially because I feel like we, as a whole, go out of our way to help the youth and I really hate seeing them miss out on the opportunity, even though I understand they might've just been a little burnt out and could not work anymore. I found myself getting a bit stressed out trying to find a way to help out the youth and trying to communicate with instructors to help log hours for youth to get paid but, just like how things worked out this week for the most part, I need to trust that everything will be fine as long as I give my best effort.

    Made an impact between 07/21/2021 and 07/24/2021 with Center for Social Concern, Code in the Schools, Community Impact Internships Program, Johns Hopkins University
    CIIP Blogs (Summer 2021)

    This was a crazy week. The saga of the YouthWorks website continues. We finally started getting the instructors assigned on the YouthWorks website but there are still several issues. For one, there were issues signing in for both instructors and youth, which were very frustrating. Additionally, for the youth that signed in they could not confirm there hours worked so it severely back logged the work flow. Alongside these issues came the host of slacks/direct messages that the youths were sending the admin about frustractions and issues they were having, where we had to walk them through what they needed to do and/or let them know that they were doing everything correct, the website wasn't working, and that we were waiting for YouthWorks to fix it. These issues persisted throughout the week but not everything was bad. The youth first Financial Literacy session, after several technical issues and switching platforms virtually, went very well. It was led by Ms. Aneka Winstead from WATT Kids and she was a master presenter. So many of the youth were very engaged and they asked super smart questions. Aneka led very meaningful discussions throughout the presentation and multiple youth stayed back, even fifteen minutes after the work day was over, to continue to engage with her and have discussions and ask questions. This first session was great for contexualizing the financial history of black people in this country and emphasizing the importance of financial literacy. Outside of the youth gaining a lot from the session, I felt like I was able to learn some things too and it was such a joy to seem the youth interacting in that space. That session was really the highlitght of the week and I look forward to the next one.

    Made an impact between 07/14/2021 and 07/17/2021 with Center for Social Concern, Code in the Schools, Community Impact Internships Program, Johns Hopkins University
    CIIP Blogs (Summer 2021)

    The second week of CodeWorks was up and down. On the bright side, a lot of students are adapting to the Gather Town Platform much better. We are having much less hiccups in the morning and the student facing side of things feels a lot less hectic. However, the administrative side of things has been a bit challenging. Due to difficulties with the YouthWorks attendance platform, I have had to continue to log a massive amount of attendance for youth because we cannot assign attendance so that the tech managers can help out. For me I feel a lot of pressure because I really want all the youth to get paid for the hours they have earned and I know that if I fail to record any hours or mess up any of the times in this very tedious process for all the 130+ youth then that's on me. On the other hand, I am happy that I can take on this role and help out in this very critical way. I hope that by the end of the summer things get a lot better with the YouthWorks system and there are no issues in making sure the students get paid.

    Made an impact between 07/07/2021 and 07/10/2021 with Center for Social Concern, Code in the Schools, Community Impact Internships Program, Johns Hopkins University
    CIIP Blogs (Summer 2021)

    In Week 3 of CIIP Code in the Schools started our highly anticipated annual CodeWorks program. While much is similar to my work last year with Code in the Schools, there is a bit that is different. For CodeWorks, Code in the Schools opperates a worksite for YouthWorks (and a couple other programs) where youth get paid through YouthWorks to learn how to code in different languages with us, create cool projects, and develop as people and potential leaders (as well as maybe even take away a few financial tips). CodeWorks 2021 is different from CodeWorks 2020 because the program is six weeks instead of five. While a lot of the content being shared and instructors are the same or similar, the platform we are using is different. Instead of using Zoom across our work groups we are using Gather Town, which has a really cool interface that looks similar to Pokemon. In a Gather Town space as you gather close to people you are entered into a zoom like call where you can see and speak to each other. Additionally, you are able to interact with items and play games. This seems to be a welcome change for the youth but at the same time it was a nightmare administratively adjusting to the platform and getting the all the youth to figure out where they needed to go for their work groups in the morning. Aside from that, I also had a massive challenge with the new YouthWorks virtual attendance tracking website as you have to log specific times for each student and lunch breaks for each student manually in a very tedious process. Since Code in the Schools has one of the largest sites, I am helping do this for well over 120 youth, which takes an enormous amount of time. These tasks has made the week draining but has not taken the fun out of it. It was a pleasure getting to meet so many students and help them in whatever way I could in this first week and I look forward to seeing how of the rest of CodeWorks 2021 plays out. It is always a pleasure to see the youth grow throughout the summer :).

    Made an impact between 06/30/2021 and 07/03/2021 with Center for Social Concern, Code in the Schools, Community Impact Internships Program

    This Impact is private

    This Impact is private

    This Impact is private

    This Impact is private

    This Impact is private