Program Overview

Hustle into tech with an introduction to foundational tech skills and career pathways at Hack the Hood.

This program will teach you the fundamentals of Python, core skills in software development, and give you a primary understanding of data types and class structures, and sharpen your collaborative skills. The Hustle program balances lectures, career exposure panels with industry professionals, peer-to-peer learning, video tutorials, and workshops that will help you begin to see yourself in tech.

To bring your new skills to life, our unique #Tech4Justice curriculum will help ground your technical learning in current social justice topics and help you explore how to build solutions to social problems using technology.

Each week will be structured around the four components of our curriculum framework:

• Technical content: essential Python coding skills, introduction to and skill building in software development
• Social Justice and Community: weekly socio-technical problem exploration
• Intersectional Tech Identity Development: career and education exploration and mentorship
• Practical skill demonstration: development of a simple portfolio and presentations by learners.

Hack the Hood & Coding Integrity

The code you write should be your own original work that reflects your understanding of the concepts we discuss together. While computer science is a collaborative discipline, you should avoid just copying and pasting work you find from other sources. Programming is all about curiosity and exploration. You should always aim to come up with original, unique code. If you are studying reliable resources, read the code carefully, understand the logic/behavior behind it and then type your own code without copying and pasting. This way, you will retain the information much better and it may be easier for you to solve similar coding problems that you may see thereafter. Your understanding of the topics is far more important to us than just the completion of the assignment. Like academic writing, your code can incorporate the ideas of others but should reflect your own approach to solving the problem.

Coding can be difficult but if you apply critical thinking, lean on your peers, and use all your resources, there is little doubt that you will succeed! While it may be tempting to copy when you are struggling, don’t give in and don’t give up on yourself! Break complex expressions and tasks down into smaller, simpler steps if you are feeling overwhelmed. Embrace your creativity and trust your gut. If your work appears to present as more sophisticated than we would anticipate, you should expect follow-up questions seeking clarity. Make use of comments in your code to ensure you thoroughly understand anything you want to submit as your own original code.