TAMPA, Fla. — It's no secret that coding is a male-dominated industry. But at Coleman Middle School in Tampa, girls are cracking that code wide open.
- Girls take on coding at Coleman Middle
- Teacher starts "Girls Who Code" Club
"I feel like girls are into coding, we just don't know about it," said eighth grader Molly Michalowski.
The school has started the "Girls Who Code" Club. It's run by a man who saw a need. Kyle Arnold is a computer science teacher.
"When you look at my classes, for example, my classes skew about 70 male and so I saw that and said I want to do something to change that," Arnold said.
So on Friday mornings, about a dozen girls come into the classroom to create codes. They're even making their own apps. The students get help from adults who build apps as a career.
"When I'm on a team, sometimes I'm the only girl in the room," said Sharon Hernandez who works at AgileThought as a Senior Software Developer. "It'll be great to see a lot more women take this on."
The "Girls Who Code" movement is a national one. In the last 6 years, clubs have popped up all over the country. The hope is to close the gender gap in technology by 2027.