Westhampton Beach Senior Shares Love of Coding With East Quogue Students

For much of his time as a student in the Westhampton Beach School District, Rowan Tiska has had a passion for technology and coding. This past year, he paired that love of computer-based science with a desire to give back to his hometown of East Quogue.

Since last year, Tiska, now a senior, has been running an increasingly popular after-school computer programming club at East Quogue School called “Cats Who Code,” a play on the school’s Wildcat mascot.

Tiska said he was inspired to start the club because, during his time as a student in East Quogue, there was not much emphasis on coding or computer science, or opportunity for kids with an affinity for it and an interest in it to learn more about coding during after-school hours.

Tiska worked with East Quogue School teachers Jackie Alessi, who was his sixth grade science teacher several years ago and remains a sixth grade science teacher in the district, and Melissa Stone, another sixth grade teacher, to put the after-school club together. He was also helped by Westhampton Beach guidance counselor Erika Habersaat, who helped him brainstorm ways to use his love of coding and the expertise he’d gained in the subject to give back to the community.

During his junior year, only six students — all boys — signed up for the Cats Who Code club, which was offered in the later part of the school year, in the spring. But this fall, the program expanded to include 25 students, more than half of whom were girls. The club was open to fifth and sixth grade students, and met once a week after school, wrapping up right before the December break.

Tiska said he had a sense that the students who signed up for the club would be capable of doing fairly high-level work, and he was right. He said he included “high school level” aspects of coding in the curriculum he created, and they rose to the challenge.

During the seven weeks the students were part of the club, Tiska taught them HTML, CSS, and Javascript, the three main fundamentals of web development. They learned how to add plain text on a page, pictures, videos and buttons, while integrating elements of CSS, a design aspect. The students were able to choose different colors, fonts and more in designing their own personal websites.

Ms. Alessi had praise for her former student and the initiative he took in starting the club.

“We are beyond proud of Rowan for creating every part of this club,” she said. “He approached me last year and once we had approval, he hit the ground running. He created a permission slip, slides to guide each club session and provided rewards and incentives to the student club members as they worked. The fifth- and sixth-graders really looked forward to our club each Tuesday and completed an awesome and personalized website by the end of our sessions together.”

Maggie Sanicola is a fifth grade student at East Quogue and participated in the club this year. She decided to join after hearing Alessi talk about the club during a visit to her classroom, saying she was interested because it “sounded fun.”

“It was something new, and I was trying to figure out if I’d like it or not,” she said.

Maggie said she didn’t know very much at all about coding and what it meant, but during the weeks she participated in the club, she learned a lot, saying that it was like learning an entirely different language.

And, most importantly, “it was fun,” she said.

Tiska gave credit to Alessi for talking up the club in the classrooms and particularly for encouraging more female students to join, something he said was important to him.

“Hopefully, it expanded the views of the female students to see programming as not such a male-dominated field or hobby,” he said.

Tiska said he was happy he was able to share his love of programming with all the students, and essentially give them an opportunity he wished he’d had at that age.

“I knew there were kids just like me who are interested in video games and tech and programming,” he said.

Tiska is now in the process of trying to find another Westhampton Beach High School student who would be interested in making the club a tradition. He will need to hand it over to someone for next year if he wants it to continue. Tiska is still in the process of applying to colleges, and said that while he doesn’t know yet where he will go, he wants to study computer science, become a software engineer, and eventually create his own tech startup.

“One thing that’s really valuable about a computer science degree is you can go into any field you want,” he said. “You’ll have the skills to do anything. That’s why I think it’s so important for kids to learn [programming] at an early age.

“It’s not as intimidating as they might think,” he added. “Giving them exposure to it early means they won’t have to be scared to pursue it as a career path, or worry that they’re not smart enough for it.”