Discipline

As an athlete, I know a lot about what it means to be disciplined.  I started training and competing at a very young age, and as a result I think I’m very good at being disciplined in the way that I approach most things in life. 

Discipline is becoming an increasingly important virtue at ScriptEd. The attention around computer science education in New York City means that we have a lot of great opportunities coming our way. We are positioned to expand rapidly and several directions.

At the same time, we have to stay disciplined and true to our long-term vision and values.  It’s tempting to make big goals, like saying we’ll teach a million kids to code or solve the entire problem in NYC in the next few years.  But for us, that’s just not realistic. 

Some organizations will take the “spray and pray” approach – for example,  getting millions of kids to do an hour’s worth of coding and hoping that it will stick with a few who choose to pursue computer science. These programs are valuable because they bring tons of attention to the issue and give kids an introduction to computer science, but this isn’t who we are at ScriptEd.  We are attempting to make a deep impact in the communities we serve. Our students need so much more than just learning how to code. They need access to the tech community, mentors, and other resources to help make them successful.  

We are also trying to change the mindset and practices of the tech community. Tech professionals working in underserved schools and building relationships will result, we think, in breaking down unconscious bias and getting talented young developers (primarily of color) from low income backgrounds into companies.  Through building relationships with their colleagues and supervisors, our students are changing the perceptions of what a software developer looks like. 

This all take deliberate, intentional and disciplined work. It means we must continue to develop deep relationships with schools, students, and people from the tech community. It means we need to grow at a rate where we can continually increase the quality of our program while serving more students at the same time.

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Thanks to Becca Novak for her contributions to this post!