Meet Ileys!

Ileys Osman is currently an instructor for our students at Thomas Edison High School which is a part of the Minneapolis Public School district. The students in Ileys' class have been working on a few different projects throughout the school year. Ileys goes into more detail with project descriptions stating, "For the first project, we managed to build a personal website using HTML and CSS. We are on our second project now building a responsive blog by using HTML, CSS and JavaScript. JavaScript can be a bit challenging when selecting different elements or using event types at first but learning to make our webpages interactive is important."

Ileys also teaches students in the St. Paul school district in an after-school program offered to middle school students are that are interested in exploring computer science. She states, "We are learning and creating computer programs by using and developing problem-solving skills. We like working through challenges by creating fun games using stack code blocks together in a linear sequence. Students also practice identifying errors in pre-written code. Finding bugs is crucial in programming because it forces students to recognize problems and overcome them while building critical thinking and problem-solving skills."

It's been three years now that Ileys has been teaching the Intro to Programming course at New Vision Foundation. Prior to her transition into teaching Programming, she was a co-teacher at a STEM school where she says she recognized that children develop creative skills while coding. "Coding is essential to any curriculum because computer programming teaches children to experiment while getting their creative juices flowing. We would all agree that computer science the Future of Now! As the world is developing and changing faster than we can keep up. Coding is and will be a useful skill to harness."

Ileys emphasizes, "Representation is key". Furthermore, she states, "Having a teacher from the same background leads to deeper connections and more engaged learning. Supporting and educating minority youth to be a part of today's digital economy is important. As a minority educator myself, giving my students the skills, they need to go out into the real world to go on to do bigger and better things is something that brings me great joy. When there are educators who look like their students. It shows students that they too are capable of achieving success academically and professionally."

 

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