Code of Conduct

Our mission is to reduce recidivism of incarcerated youth by training them in software engineering principles and web development technologies. We give our students a better chance at a successful reentry into society by preparing them for a career that allows the chance to grow and flourish with Seattle’s booming tech sector.

Code of Conduct’s conception was early last March, when our founder was invited by a friend to join their weekly mentoring session with incarcerated youth at a transitional facility. Inspired by the youth’s commitment to building a better life for themselves, our founder began holding weekly study halls with the youth, where he would help them learn the basics of web development.

It soon became evident that if the youth were to meet the end of the journey they had started, they would need a focused curriculum that walked them through the advanced concepts and offer a full framework of support. By July, The study hall had morphed into a full blown classroom with unit introduction lectures, coursework for self study, and in-class projects to cement concepts. Just a month later the organization was incorporated, Code of Conduct, a name chosen by the program’s students. Yet another month later, Code of Conduct received 501(c)3 status and began building teams of volunteer instructors, curriculum developers, and community liaisons.

An organization born by the dexterity of the community it serves.

We provide a program for incarcerated youth to learn software engineering principles and web development technologies. This program has weekly class sessions including interactive classes which introduce a topic via a structured conversation rather than a lecture, weekly self-study coursework, 24/7 online access to instructor support, weekly in-class projects to cement understanding, subject capstone projects to bring together related units, and personal tutoring days upon student request.

The program is 4 phases:

Phase 1 teaches the student how to build the physical building blocks of a website, how to style it, and how to make it interactive. Phase 1 also encompasses the groundwork of software engineering principles, going over different datatypes, logical operation, and how to use them to complete a certain task. The languages covered in Phase 1 are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Phase 2 introduces JavaScript libraries and frameworks that allow a student to build out a full, scalable application. The technologies learned here are React, Node, Express, MongoDB, and SQL.

Phase 3 facilitates the students assembling of all the different pieces into a capstone project of their own design.

Phase 4 is interview preparation, workplace preparation and job readiness.

After Phase 4 we hold graduation and start connecting graduates to first employment opportunities.

Here is an example presentation used in our conversational unit introduction days.