Meet Brennan, a CodeWizardsHQ middle school student who not only excels at coding, but is an accomplished athlete, and an honors student. His hard work and dedication to all of his endeavors have made him a CodeWizardsHQ standout student.
Brennan’s Coding Journey
Brennan started his coding journey with CodeWizardsHQ a little over a year ago. Like many CodeWizardsHQ students, Brennan became interested in coding through gaming. He found that the more he played, the more coding skills became important to successfully navigating his hobby.
Brennan’s dad was happy to encourage a coding education for Brennan and he started researching options. He was looking for a coding program with some specific features. As a military family, they wanted a program that could move with them.
“When I first started with the idea of getting him into coding, I did a general search for coding classes and started reading reviews. I started digging into some of the availability and flexibility, and how many courses were offered. I wanted more flexibility because we just never know where we will be.”
While the virtual nature of CodeWizardsHQ classes was important, Brennan’s dad noticed other features that drew him to the program.
“I liked that the curriculum was stair-stepped, building on skills, having different levels, and the internship program. He can continue on as long as he wants. I wanted him to gain skills for high school, college, and beyond. I realize that those skills are invaluable. I see them every day at work.”
Favorite Projects
Brennan has been making his way through CodeWizardsHQ’s Middle School Program. His Wizard Level I curriculum started with an Introduction to Programming With Python and concluded with Building Webpages With HTML/CSS. He is currently in his first Capstone Class. Brennan enthusiastically describes quite a few favorite projects.
“At the very beginning of the year, I really liked when we built the rocket ship. That was a really good starting point. At the end of the Python course, where you had to get into the castle was also fun.”
The Castle Quest App is very popular among students. They code a full-fledged game that they can play and share with friends after finishing the class. It’s quite an accomplishment!
Brennan’s dad has been pleased with CodeWizardsHQ’s program and his son’s progress.
“The CodeWizardsHQ experience has been great. I really appreciate the flexibility of being able to plan his classes every few weeks based on his schedule. The teachers have been responsive. The office hours and the homework help have been invaluable. The focus is on making students succeed, not just on grades which I think is important for youth. Seeing the skills that he’s gained in this program are critically important and these are going to be skills that the younger children going into teens are going to need to be successful.”
Brennan has enjoyed learning these all-important skills and looks forward to expanding his coding knowledge.
“I feel like Python and CSS have been my favorite ones, because they both can help build websites and it was just a great experience. I look forward to learning JavaScript. I feel like it’s a valuable skill to learn.”
A Busy Seventh Grader
Brennan sees a future where he brings his coding skills into his career choice, but in the meantime, he’s a very busy seventh grader. In addition to being a standout CodeWizardsHQ student, he is accomplished in school as well. He is in an honors program and reports that his favorite class is a very engaging history course.
Brennan also stays busy with sports activities. He plays a variety of sports, but his favorite ones are football and baseball. He plays those through local leagues. Brennan is a true utility player who plays catcher, first base, pitcher, and third base. In football, he is a tight end or quarterback. He has also played basketball.
Brennan sees similarities between learning to code and becoming more skilled in sports.
“I feel like the memory of things and just learning, just getting more in-depth with coding is the same as sports because the more you get in-depth with it and the more you practice it the better you get.”
Brennan’s CodeWizardsHQ instructor nominated him for this Spotlight and sees the value of his efforts and the extra attention that he brings to helping fellow students.
“Brennan is naturally curious and always puts forth his best effort. He’s also someone who willingly helps other students both inside and outside of class.”
We are thrilled that Brennan and his family have chosen CodeWizardsHQ. We look forward to watching him progress through our program and to a very bright future.
