Google’s igniteCS program recruited undergraduates to own and lead after-school mentorship programs, including selecting or designing the curriculum. But their lessons tended to be low quality and time-intensive to create. Prospective volunteers were also daunted by the task.

So I designed program “tracks” to help volunteers save time in lesson planning, use active learning strategies, and practice good classroom management. I adapted existing curricula and also created new lessons from scratch.

Impact: of the programs that registered for the Fall 2017 iteration of igniteCS, about 10% were new programs and all of these requested curricula. Even returning programs that already had their own material still requested ours (about 60%). We received comments from volunteers about how the lessons were fun, interesting, and easy to follow.