Our Response to Covid-19

Dear Friends and Supporters,

At 9 Dots, the personal care, health, and safety of our employees, our students, and our families is of paramount importance to us. If you are part of our school community, you already know that on March 12th, we made the difficult decision to suspend our in-school Get Coding and onsite Academy programs to help prevent the spread of the Corona Virus. Within two days, our staff began working remotely. Shortly after, LAUSD and CUSD announced formal school closures.

But our work continues. Our schools and communities are all creating new ways to adapt to the challenges facing us and ensure that our kids keep learning. Our in school service program, Get Coding, has already begun creating remote teaching tools to facilitate learning experiences for students at home. Our platform will soon have instructional videos embedded in student playlists so students can receive direct instruction from our staff. We are enjoying testing the content on ourselves.

In addition, the AP CSP course offered in our Academy space has now gone completely virtual. An average of 82% of students have been in attendance for each lesson and this virtual class time is having a great impact. One student in particular was unable to join for the first week and subsequently had 0% progress on classwork, however, the following week his progress skyrocketed to 86%, proof that his effort and attendance in class paid off. These lessons are preparing students to take the newly modified AP CSP exam. The College Board has made the test available online and all of our current twelve students will be submitting their portfolio to be graded this Spring.

Our CS Education Heroes Awards will still occur in May, however, we are taking a creative approach to move it online. This year we are turning it into a two month virtual event, with videos from staff, teachers, family members, and CS experts. Are you working with your students or your children on coding lessons at home? Send us a 30 second clip of your lessons or why you think CS education is so important and we will share on our social media! Pictures are welcome too! 

We are all in this together. Our staff at 9 Dots is diligently working to continue providing students access to computer science education. We are looking forward to hearing from you, seeing your faces online, and learning about why you value CS education. We will continue to update you in the upcoming weeks. 

Sincerely,

Amy Iorio, C.E.O.