Since its founding just a few years ago, the Coding Initiative at Carl Wunsche Sr. High School has had a lot to brag about. From its members taking the two top spots at a state competition to a pair of students winning it all last summer, taking home Gold at the SkillsUSA National Leadership and Skills Conference in Web Design & Development, the student-led club has plenty of bragging rights.

But one of the Coding Initiative’s biggest achievements — and its primary focus — is spreading the word about exciting opportunities in technology and the skills needed to succeed. And they aren’t just focusing on their fellow students on Wunsche’s campus. They are taking things to middle schools across the Spring Independent School District. 

“It’s really important to engage students early, like middle school, and show them new ideas and see what they’re passionate about at that point,” Iman Syed, a senior at Wunsche and the head of Community Outreach for the Coding Initiative said. “When you come to high school, you kind of want to have an understanding of what you’re interested in [for the future]. So when you come here, you can choose your pathway and you can find the clubs that you best fit into.” 

So far, the students have worked with more than half of the district’s middle schools — including Springwoods Village, Wells, Spring Leadership Academy, Claughton, and Bailey middle schools. In these workshops, students from the Coding Initiative show middle school students the fundamentals of coding and web design, to give them a taste of what it is like to work in those fields. 

“We do a few hands-on hardware activities with students, as well as show them the coding side of the game Flappy Bird, which is something we made in the Coding Initiative,” Syed said. 

The impact of these middle school workshops have already been felt, as incoming freshmen show interest in the Coding Initiative and relevant classes on campus like Information Technology Design and others offered in the career pathway.

But for seniors like Syed, as well as Anderson Ramriez, the Associate President of the Coding Initiative, they are looking to make an impact beyond their years at Wunsche High School.

“We plan to reach out to El Salvador this summer, to do outreach in the different schools there,” Ramirez, who has family that attended school in El Salvador, said. “And then we plan to actually start this project once we’re in college, to take a semester gap and then go to these schools and basically showcase coding and its opportunities to them.”

For more information on the school’s Coding Initiative, visit codinginitiative.org.