mentors4all is an app built for Hack To The Future, a hackathon focused on advancing educational innovation in tech, hosted by Cleverbridge in Chicago. It was awarded the Dr. Emmet Brown Innovation Award and the grand prize(!). It has a single-page Ember front-end with a JSON-serving Rails API.
CS4All is an educational initiative to ensure that all students in the Chicago Public School system complete a Computer Science credit before graduating high school, and to spread quality CS education to all students in the district. Many of the new CS teachers within CPS lack a formal computer science experience or training, and mentors4all helps bridge the knowledge gap.
CS4All piloted a successful mentoring (teaching assistant) program to aid these students and teachers new to programming. As students work through online courses like Code.org, the mentor provides guidance and helps teachers answer new questions. However, schools that need the most help are managing the most stress and have the fewest resources to gain access to these mentors.
The barriers between getting these mentors to schools in need are largely administrative; there are mentor applications to review, approve, and background checks to make, schedules to match, and more. In its first iteration, mentors4all matches CPS educators and programming mentors based on location, schedule, and area of expertise— shortening the process so that under-served classrooms get CS mentors. Teachers are also empowered to reach out directly to potential CS mentors, rather than having an administrator manually manage connections.
- Drew Bollinger, front-end dev
- Kathryn Garbacz, back-end dev
- Cat Greim, product manager // designer
- Caroline Kenworthy, back-end dev
- Savannah Million, designer // front-end dev
- Andy Rasmussen, product manager