What We Do

We are a programming club for young people (a "Dojo") affiliated with the CoderDojo movement.

We provide meetings, equipment, adult mentors, and (eventually) fellow student mentors, for coders to advance their skillsets through work on projects. We don't dictate what the projects are, although we're happy to help you work out a realistic project and a roadmap toward completing it. Instead, we let you work on whatever interests you, among a community of mentors and other coders at various levels.

We acknowledge the social aspects of computing, and half of the skills we expect you to pick up are social ones. For this reason, we require quite a bit of social involvement, through coders taking on mentorship roles, and through interaction with the global Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) community. As a part of this, coders will learn to think beyond their historical social context and learn how to get along with other people in global communities.

We provide a "belts" system for measuring your progress as a programmer. You don't have to go through this system if you don't want to, though! As long as you are trying to move forward toward some coding goal, we are here to help.

What Mentors Do

Mentors are adults and advanced students who are on hand to help you with your projects. A mentor's primary responsibility is to

• We will make sure there is space for you to work, and that there is a working computer for you to use.
• We will assist you in keeping your computer in good working order, if you bring your own.
• We will guide you through the entire project process, at the lower color belts.
• We will stay out of your way until you ask us for help.
• We will get out of your way again when you're ready to try things on your own.
• We will refrain from typing on your keyboard whenever possible.
• We will encourage you to be inquisitive and feel good about yourself for trying new things.

What We Expect From You

We will try to work with you to help you with problems you're having, but if you become a problem yourself, the mentors may demand that you leave.

• We expect you to be respectful toward the mentors and coders in the Dojo, and to the larger global community of coders. In particular, we have a low tolerance for posturing or shaming. Everybody is here to learn, and coders should approach learning with a sense of humility and cooperation.
• We expect you to act respectfully toward the systems and equipment you're using. You must bear in mind that someone spent time and effort working on whatever you're working with, and they probably have pride in their work. We want you to have opinions and ideas about how things could be improved, but we also want you to find a way to express these positively, even if nobody you think will care is near.
• We expect you to be sensitive to different backgrounds, cultures, and life experiences. As you integrate into a global community, you will encounter people whose lives have been very different from your own, and we will help you navigate these interactions. You must be ready to make constant adjustments to how you understand and deal with people.
• We expect you to be honestly working on some computation project most of the time. We want you to work with others, and it's important to realize that part of socializing is letting your interactions with your peers veer away from goals periodically. But it's equally important to learn when and how to bring your interactions back to the task at hand, and how to maintain focus.
• We expect you to show up. The Dojo only works when people come to it, and a big part of what we want you to learn is how to work with other coders. If you have a super cool project, but haven't fulfilled the social requirements for advancement, we won't advance you to the next belt color.

We recognize that our expectations might differ from the behavior of computer professionals you know.

Fees

We don't charge any fees, but the Makerspace has to collect fees in order to pay rent and cover the other expenses associated with having a physical presence. For the time being, however, the Makerspace is not charging any fees for CoderDojo participants.

You can buy us some belts, if you'd like: talk to an adult mentor for information about what to order and where. Other donations should be made to the Makerspace.