About

Katie Simons started CodeSWM in 2024 with the ultimate goal of making coding accessible to all children in Southwest Michigan. She has been teaching coding in some capacity for over 15 years. We are starting small with introductory coding class opportunities during the summer. We hope to be able to offer to come to local schools and offer kids the chance to do a few coding lessons. Our summer goal is to get enough registrations to purchase a full class set of robots.

Katie has taught coding to undergraduate and graduate students and has consistently heard from her students that they wished they had learned coding earlier. High school students also already have the expectation that coding is only for “smart” kids. Our goal is to have all kids have the opportunity to try coding while they are young and decide for themselves if they like it before they get the idea that they can’t learn it. There are many great tools that have been developed specifically to teach coding to elementary and middle school aged kids.