Our mission

Bootstrap is a curriculum for middle-school students. It teaches them programming through the media of images and animations. It consists of nine 90-minute lessons, delivered once a week in an after-school setting, with accompanying handouts and software. Our primary delivery network is Citizen Schools, who make it easy for community professionals to teach after-school classes as volunteers.

Our students

Bootstrap has already engaged nearly 300 middle-schoolers, of whom 24% are female; 40% of those reporting race are African-American and another 30% Latino; and 70% receive free or reduced price lunch. These students have an average age of 11 years, 9 months. They are in Boston and its surroundings, Austin, the Bay Area (San Francisco, San Jose, and Redwood City), and New York City.

Our algebra connection

Unlike many other middle-school programs, Bootstrap uses algebra as the vehicle for creating images and animations. This is not just algebra over numbers, of course, but over a much richer set of data types, such as images. We're not out to provide a booster shot of algebra to older students; we plan to be the first dose of formal algebra, for students as young as eleven.