I had to move mountains that morning to book the auditorium. And it brought a whole set of challenges. Classes were held in it before and after the lunch period. We had to be in and out within the lunch period with no overlap. We had to set up the pizza, get people seated, finish the presentation and get them out with a clean-up in 35 minutes.
When the bell rang for lunch, we opened the doors to the auditorium and the kids began to stream in. More and more students. Over 200.
Sure, the pizza helped, but it was more than food that brought them there.
In that first presentation, we decided that, rather than start with a story of creative passion from an industry professional, we would start with a story of creative passion closer to home - from those students who had been working with Gage to develop the new mobile app for the school.
The students did an amazing job telling their story and demonstrating the app. You could begin to see the gears turning in the other students’ heads. “Griffen and his friends did that?” was whispered around.
At the end of the program, we asked the students to give us some feedback and to find out if they, too, might be interested to learn some coding skills. More than half of the kids said they wanted to.
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