OUR APPROACH
Social-Emotional Learning
Nurturing high emotional intelligence.
Critical Theories
Decolonizing the conversations around STEM education.
Technology
Inspiring a young generation of innovators.
We are committed to serving our youth.
Our programs are at the forefront of multicultural STEM education, enabling our kids to create new technologies that only they can create. We train our staff on social-emotional learning; critical race, gender, and multicultural pedagogy theories; and of course, the technologies that we work with. We build the curriculum ourselves, grounded in these foundational pillars, which means we seek out and incorporate our youth's input on what they want to learn. Our after school and summer enrichment programs cover a range of technical topics, including:
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• Computer science fundamentals
• Full-stack web development
• Video game development
• Digital Art
• Artificial Intelligence
• Robotics
• Data Science
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Social-Emotional Learning
Social emotional learning is an important component of GOKiC programming that is directly embedded in every classroom we teach. Our mission is to provide pathways of liberation for youth of color and equip them with the tools to become community leaders of change. To do this we need to have empathetic instructors who can also nurture that high emotional intelligence in our students. This is why SEL is so important and is incorporated in every lesson we plan out.
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The way we integrate SEL into our educational approach is starting with our instructors. All our instructors get trained in an SEL model provided by David P. Weikart Center For Youth Program Quality. Then new instructors get to meet with staff who has implemented this tool in classroom settings as well as observe how we do it. Every year we set priority goals on which SEL items we will prioritize to meet the needs of our youth. These goals are supported by internal and external assessments where we see which items we are doing well in and implementing effectively and which we need to prioritize and work more on. Lastly, once we have these goals set we create a curriculum with our priority SEL goals in mind and directly imbed them into the curriculum. This is a cyclical process, where our instructors actively reflect on their SEL implementation, provide critical feedback on areas of improvement, and make adaptations to our classroom setting and curriculum.
Past Projects
Our curriculum changes from quarter to quarter, but these are a few of the projects we have had in the past.
Computer Science Foundations
Who are our activists? We share about some computing fundamentals and play a GOKiC card game that teaches about some key BIPOC activists involved in work like abolition and environmental justice, locally and globally. Youth then apply these learnings to program an online version of the game about activists that they research themselves.
Robotics
What are race and gender semiotics? We discuss robotics assembly and programming, stories about race and gender that can be empowering or disempowering, and how images or symbols can reinforce these stories. Our youth assemble their own robots and program the robot to sense light and activate the motors to navigate a set of images they identify as either empowering and disempowering.
Machine Learning
How can technology and living beings improve themselves? We engage with the concept of human evolution by running through an activity to create the most effective Black Panther suit. Youth experiment with how different characteristics lead to different outcomes. With this new found knowledge of human evolution, youth program a version of the Flappy Bird game that teaches itself to fly and become the best player!
