Hi! I’m Kari and I am one of the new Instructors with Ada Developers Academy. I am so excited to join the Ada team because I believe it is the perfect combination of my love of software development and teaching.
My passion for teaching started when I was very young, teaching my dolls and stuffed animals math on the chalkboard in my basement in Buffalo, NY. Sometime in middle school I got an overhead projector for my birthday so that I could use it to teach my “students”. I made a bunch of math worksheets and always printed 20 copies for all of my students (there were actually none) and one copy for my overhead to that I could write on it with the special pens. Looking back on it all I can think is – what a waste of paper!
I was super lucky to be introduced to computer science in high school and have stuck with it ever since. When I was an undergrad at the University at Buffalo, I was a TA for the intro CS course and I loved teaching the labs. After I graduated, I put teaching on hold for many years while I was pursuing my career as a software engineer. Shortly thereafter, I moved to Philly and started going to grad school at night. When I finally finished grad school, I felt like I had so much free time and I didn’t know what to do with myself!
That’s when I started doing different volunteer work with middle school and high school students which reminded me how much I love working with students, but was really interested in teaching topics related to what I did day in and day out. Next I found my local Girl Develop It in Philly and became a TA for a few courses. It was such a great experience and made me realize that I wanted to continue being involved with this community. From there I decided to take a much bigger leap and become a Summer Immersion Program teacher for Girls Who Code. Seeing my Girls Who Code students go from having little to no experience with programming, to seeing their incredible final projects in only a few weeks really made me think about the impact I was making as a software engineer. I realized that I could change lives by sharing my knowledge and excitement about creating software with others. Awesome!!!!
So here I am with Ada and the opportunity to do what I really love to do! I am very excited about joining this bustling Seattle tech community and getting to know the PNW. When I’m not coding, attending local tech events, or volunteering, I’m most likely dancing around wildly or singing songs I’ve written about snacks.
Please share with me what you love about Ada Developers Academy, software development and Seattle @karianneban or via e-mail!