At Penguin Coding School, we take pride in how well-versed our teaching staff are with coding languages and the ability to connect with younger students. One of our Lexington Massachusetts teachers, Sreehitha Bodepudi started teaching here during her freshman year of High School. During her middle school years she was already an accomplished coder with experience in Scratch as well as Python due to her attendance at various coding camps.  She is currently in her junior year of high school and is teaching a variety of classes here, such as Python, Minecraft, Scratch and Lego Robotics Camps. On top of her busy schedule, Sreehitha is a part of the aerospace club at Lexington High School as well as her school’s student faculty senate.

If you are interested in learning more about her, please read our interview below where she answers questions regarding her future career and her advice to parents.

What is your name, age, and hometown?

SB:  My name is Sreehitha Bodepudi, I lived in California until fifth grade but have grown up for the majority of my life in Lexington, Massachusetts.

How did you come across the idea of teaching coding to kids?

SB:  I came across the idea of teaching coding to kids because I used to always do coding camps in elementary school, and once I was in High School I started to look online for somewhere to teach, and came across Penguin Coding School. With having experience in scratch as well as Python, I felt motivated to teach kid the fundamentals of coding.

What did you plan to major in at college?

SB: I currently plan on pursuing a computer science major, with a possible finance minor at an east coast university.

What is your favorite part of teaching at Penguin Coding School?

SB: I really enjoy that the curriculum is open ended, as it allows me to adjust my lessons for each student's learning level and feel confident that I am teaching them material at a pace that works for them.

What is the best part about working with younger kids?

DM: The best part about working with younger kids is that their stories and tangents bring so much spirit and laughter into the classroom.

Which two coding languages do you think are the most crucial for kids to learn?

SB: For younger kids I would say scratch is the best coding language to start with because it's easy to grasp concepts using block-based code and it has a lot of interactive parts that make it fun. Once students get a bit older,  taking the next step to Python seems to flow well as they are using the same concepts they learned in Scratch to make more complicated code.

If you could give advice to parents on how to inspire their children to learn to code, what would you say?

SB:  My advice would be to try to connect it to something that they are interested in and show them how coding is connected to the games that they already play every day.

Do you foresee yourself in a STEM related career in the future?

SB:  I am definitely interested in a STEM related career, possibly doing something related to software engineering.

If you could create your own app, what would its purpose be?

SB: If I could create my own app I would create something similar to Scratch but as a phone app and craft a simple way to teach kids how to code.

To find out more about our teachers here at Penguin, check out our teacher page on our website!