It’s a few hours into the school day and bus after bus pulls up as hundreds of students start to off load. Elementary and middle school students pour inside the district's multipurpose center. Parents, siblings, and community members stand by, excited to cheer on their students while coaches and staff anxiously await the day's events.

Huddled together, some in coordinating jerseys–they’ve excitedly been preparing for weeks and even years. 

After receiving directions, participants peel off to make final preparations for their team and individual events. 

Long before the traditional stereotypes have had a chance to form, these young learners have come to compete. Defying the norms, they face a different type of arena. This competition today is called Klein Codes – a yearly coding event where students from Klein Independent School District (ISD) in Harris County, Texas gather together and compete in coding challenges. For us, it’s unlike any competition we’ve seen anywhere else in the country. 

What is Klein Codes? 

Klein Codes is an annual, two-day coding celebration organized by Klein (ISD). Klein ISD has 53,000 students districtwide and is making an impact with their after school coding clubs. Klein ISD’s unique and thriving coding club model is in place at all 33 of their elementary schools, and 10 of their intermediate schools. 

The clubs serve about 1,500 students (referred to as “Coders”) who come together after school to learn how to code using Skill Struck, and other coding platforms, facilitated by coaches.

 “Klein ISD’s Advanced Academics department provides stipends for 2 coding Coaches/clubs per elementary school and intermediate campuses. The demand is so high that we have to add a 3rd Coach/club on some campuses,” said Jessica Jasper, the Program Coordinator - Advanced Academic Services, College and Career Pathways for Klein ISD. 

As the end of the school year approaches, the Coders are anxious to celebrate and show off their coding skills they learned throughout the year. They do that by competing against the other clubs in their school district at Klein Codes. This year the Klein Codes theme was “Choose Your Own Adventure.”

 “Our annual coding expo celebrates these coders, similar to fine arts showcases and sports banquets, but with our own, unique techy twist. Students have the opportunity to compete in multiple events and showcase their coding superpowers,” Jasper said. 

The Coders and Coaches are all bused to Klein's Multipurpose Center on the day of the event. Then the fun begins as the coders compete in multiple challenges. These challenges include: 

1. A District Challenge. Before the Klein Codes event, Coders create a multi-level E for Everyone video game on a platform of their choice. They present their games–either solo or in small groups–to a community volunteer from the technology industry, who then uses a rubric to score and provide feedback. 
2. The Quick Challenges. During the event, there are 10-minute challenges that are conducted live. Coders are given a challenge based on their skill level, and they have to solve the challenge with code within the given timeframe. This year, the “Proficient Challenge” was an HTML-based challenge hosted on Skill Struck. The “Advanced Challenge” was a Python-based challenge also hosted on Skill Struck.
3. The Rubik Cube Challenge. Over the course of the day, a thrilling Rubik Cube challenge took place with participants racing to solve the cubes. After numerous rounds, two finalists emerged and squared off during a live onstage event. The tension was palpable as they completed the challenge in under 25 seconds, leaving the audience in awe.

Kathleen Plott, Klein ISD’s Advanced Academic Services Director said, “This opportunity for EVERY student in grades 3-8 is phenomenal. The exceptional level of creative coding products and brilliant attention to detail, then appraised by experts in the field are unprecedented.” 

Building A Thriving Coding Club Model

Over the past five years Klein Codes has been growing to increase opportunities for all their students. Jasper shared, “When I first took over #KleinCodes, the program had been around for about two years and had focused heavily on Scratch with just one entry point which left no room for students who had varying skill levels. Over the past five years, #KleinCodes has grown to include opportunities for multiple programming languages for students in 3rd-8th grade. Our coding clubs now serve as a pathway into advanced computer science and CTE courses in high school.” 

A Partnership for All Students

Klein ISD is innovative when it comes to providing opportunities for all students to thrive today as well as in the future.  Their mission statement for High-Quality Teaching states that they “Thoughtfully tailor learning for each student’s strengths, needs, and passions by Leveraging technology to innovate, connect, share, and enhance collaboration.” 

Jasper explained, “After years of looking for a coding platform that could support students who have varied interests and skill levels, I selected Skill Struck because of the flexibility it provided our students and coaches. I loved the clean and logical user interface. Plus, Skill Struck has top notch customer support and has been there with us every step of our implementation year!”

Klein ISD invited Skill Struck team members to support and judge the Klien Codes event. 

“Klein codes was an exhilarating experience. To see an entire community come together and support so many kids is really something else. Kids, parents, and teachers were on pins and needles as they prepared, presented, and competed. It truly was like a massive sporting event and came with all the same emotions.” said Brian Grow, CRO at Skill Struck. 

3 Things to Consider when Building a Coding Club for Your District

After five years, Klein Codes continues to grow and inspire kids and communities to jump into coding. We believe other districts can implement a similar model, helping communities engage in a skill set that will prepare students for the future. 

Here are three things to consider when building a coding club for your district: 

1. Coding helps students build skills beyond technical skills. Parents are quick to sign their kids up for sporting camps and teams. While a very small amount of kids may go on to play in college–and an even smaller amount may play professionally–that’s not why parents sign their kids up for sports. Involvement in sports teaches kids how to work hard, play as a team, and dedicate themselves to something meaningful. Coding also teaches kids these same lessons, and so much more. It’s important for parents to understand that coding helps their kids learn skills like team building, problem solving, critical thinking, and more. 
2. An earlier introduction to coding positively impacts core content areas. Encouraging students to learn coding early not only helps them gain important skills previously mentioned, but it can also lead to improved core content performance and test scores. We have worked alongside district partners that have successfully implemented coding as a remediation tool in elementary core content areas and the results are inspirational. Using coding to explore Math, Science, and language concepts in a real-world context, makes learning more fun, dynamic, and immersive for young minds. 

3. Coding can be engaging and fun for people of all ages. When we say coding is for everyone, we mean it. Coding sparks creativity, problem solving, teamwork, critical thinking, and more. We’ve seen students, teachers, and parents engage and enjoy coding from blocks to text-based learning. Coding is engaging because it can be experienced in a variety of ways, through group projects, block-coding, games, unplugged activities, and more. By having a variety of coding modules, students and teachers alike can engage and comprehend even some of the hardest concepts, giving them confidence in their overall learning.  

To learn more about how to implement a coding club into your district, reach out to us at skillstruck.com/get-demo.