Julainee Sanchez, age 10 from Washington Heights

Julainee Sanchez is ten years old and lives in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City, a largely Dominican neighborhood. She lives with her mother, grandmother, and five siblings and spent her childhood moving between New York and the Dominican Republic, where her family is from. She goes to P.S. 48 Po Michael J Buczek School, a Title 1 school named after a 24-year-old police officer who was murdered by drug dealers in the neighborhood.

She has always been a bright and confident girl, playing volleyball with friends in her spare time. This fall, Julainee developed a new passion. She was introduced to coding by her 5th grade teacher, Alana Aaron. After she completed Code.org’s CS Fundamentals Course 2, she did as many coding tutorials as she could and made friends with the robot duo, Dash and Dot from Wonder Workshop. “She spends her evenings hand-writing programs for Dash and Dot and brings them to school each morning, begging to put them into action.”, Ms. Aaron told us.

Blockly code Julainee wrote for Dash and Dot while at home

“What’s most amazing about Julainee is that she has used her love of programming Dash and Dot to connect with and include students in our class who otherwise might not easily connect with other students. For instance, she wrote a script for Dash and Dot to ‘star’ in our school Hour of Code kickoff video, and then worked with two autistic students to program Dash and Dot with their voices. She also included a student who recently arrived from Yemen and speaks very little English in the production of the video,” Ms. Aaron said.

Jenny Sanchez, her mother, is incredibly proud but also a little uncertain. She works full time in Times Square, sometimes picking up extra shifts. When she comes home tired, Julainee always has a new program or game to show her. “I see her really blow up on this, and I tell her she really needs to pursue it,” Jenny said, “but once she goes to middle school and doesn’t have Ms. Aaron anymore, what will she do?”

Only one out of four schools teach computer science, and the numbers are even lower when it comes to elementary schools. Today, things are looking up. President Obama just signed the Every Student Succeeds Act that overhauls the nation’s education system and puts computer science at the same level as other academic subjects. Check out how schools can access federal funds to implement computer science here. This law, however, won’t change much for next year when Julainne enters middle school. Excellent organizations like CoderDojo provide free classes, and Code.org has a listing of local places to learn. Busy parents like Jenny Sanchez often don’t have time to seek these opportunities out.

Today we made a special visit to Julainne’s school to give her an early Christmas present. We encouraged her to do the puzzles and challenges in the Wonder and Blockly apps. With the right tools and determination, she can learn all on her own without help from her mother. We’ll also be organizing another Wonder League Robotics Competition that kids from anywhere can participate in, even if they don’t have a teacher who is an advocate for coding. “You might have to take it upon yourself to learn if you don’t have teacher who teaches coding in middle school,” Ms. Aaron told her, “you can organize your own team, ask a teacher in your school if you can use her room after class, and participate in the coding competition.”

We told her that we want her to pursue her interests in computer science and robotics because we need future technology leaders like her. She has a generous heart and passion for computer science, a passion that was sparked by the Hour of Code. We can’t wait to see what she does next.