Three days Isn't a lot of time, but I have noticed that it's enough time to watch a student go from, learning something completely new to starting to imagine what they could do with it. There are two moments in that process that I particularly enjoy.

The first is the brainstorming session. I challenge students to be personal and creative with their projects. I want these projects to have meaning for them and to show them what these tools can do. Not just for other people out there in the tech world, but for them, their ideas, and their goals right now.

It's a moment where you can feel the wheels start turning in the room. It's also one of the first opportunities I get to really connect with the students and learn more about who they are, their interests, and the aspirations they have.

You start to get a feel for the students who have been waiting for this moment to pour out all of their ideas, and the students who haven't realized yet that they already have the ability and experiences to form ideas of their own. I get the amazing opportunity to encourage their ideas and help spark that excitement.

Then comes the work of actually bringing those ideas to life.

During one of our three-day classes with Urban League, there was one student who really stood out to me during this part of the process. He was building a website for his family's food business, a place where they could connect with customers who wanted his grandma's delicious Mexican food.

Over those three days, I got to watch his idea start to become something tangible.

That brings me to the other moment I enjoy as an instructor. It's the moment when a student has been getting a taste of all of this bite-sized information and you can see that brightness in their eyes as the desire to figure out more about what these concepts are really for and what else they can do with them starts to grow. It's that moment right before takeoff.

By the end of the three days, I could see that happening with him. His questions started reaching beyond the project he was building. He wanted to know what a day as a developer could look like, what a developer's workflow was like, and what other tools they used in their work. He was starting to ask how he could take this further, how he could learn more, and how he could fit into this world of tech. That moment is so exciting to witness.

He continued building out his site, and when I shared with the class that they could take the websites they had just started building and actually make them live for the world to see for free, he was especially excited.

That conversation, along with the desire I saw in a handful of students to keep learning, made me think about what we could leave them with once those three days were over. I put together a package of next steps they could take in their learning journeys, with reliable learning resources and an invitation to stay connected with us.

As part of those resources, I created a guide showing them how to publish their websites using GitHub Pages. I wanted them to have easy, step-by-step instructions they could follow on their own, along with video resources they could reference if they wanted to go through the process again.

I don't know where that initial spark will take each student or what their journey will look like from here. But I got the opportunity to encourage their curiosity, help them explore their ideas, and offer some guidance. Getting to be even a small part of that journey and where it might take them is an amazing thing to be a part of.