This piece is part of Mashable Spotlight, which presents in-depth looks at the people, concepts and issues shaping our digital world.
There are no lockers in the hallways at Beaver Country Day School. Instead, backpacks and tote bags line either side of the floor while students step over them during the mid-morning rush to class. Nearly everyone is carrying a laptop.
"There used to be lockers, but nobody was really using them," a passing staff member tells me with a shrug.
The private school, for grades six through twelve, sits in a quiet nook of Chestnut Hill, Mass. — a suburb sandwiched a few miles between, and directly below, Cambridge and downtown Boston. It's not far from where Mark Zuckerberg built a world-changing social network from his Harvard University dorm room just nine years ago.
Two weeks ago, Beaver became the first school in the United States to implement computer coding into each of its classes.
It's a new, albeit eccentric experiment. The school isn't launching mandatory programming courses into the schedule, exactly, but is instead having its teachers introduce coding (ideally, in the most organic ways possible) into their respective subjects. Calculation-heavy courses such as math and science, as well as humanities such as English, Spanish and history — even theater and music — will all be getting a coded upgrade.
True, Beaver may be the first of its kind to experiment with coding in every class, but the idea that more high school students should take STEM-related courses — particularly in programming and coding — isn't new.
The private sector has for years been pressing sixth through twelfth grade schools to prepare kids earlier on for the tech-heavy workforce lying ahead of them. Code.org reports more than 1.4 million computer jobs will be in demand by 2020, yet only 400,000 students will go on to study computer science in college.
Some high schools have begun to offer programming courses as electives, but that is largely still a rarity. Beaver's staff believes it's time to revamp the curriculum as a whole — if only to better, and realistically, prepare its kids for the 21st century economy.
Rob MacDonald, dressed in a navy gingham button-up and canary yellow pants, leans against a white board in front of his advanced calculus class on the second floor of Beaver's U-shaped building. He's just written down an equation, and the 14 students in his class are trying to find a formula to determine its slope.
Some are using the usual tools: graphing calculators, notebooks and pens. A handful of others, however, are using their laptops and a programming language called Python. Liam Brady, a senior, walks to the front of the room and plugs his computer into the monitor to test the script MacDonald's asking about — a shortcut, essentially, that Brady has designed to perform the calculation for him.
The rest of the class, MacDonald included, watches as he inputs the equation and waits for the slope to show. It works. MacDonald, grinning reassuringly, moves on to the next question.
"This is our seventh school day of the year. The content we're covering now is content that, a few years ago, we wouldn't even be touching until the third week or so. We're literally twice as efficient ," MacDonald tells me.
"But we're not sacrificing the traditional stuff, either. [My students] still know how to take derivatives and do calculus. Understanding how to use Python, or write code to solve problems, is just a way of having an additional tool to be creative with."
MacDonald, who's been teaching at Beaver for 16 years, is head of the math department. He also holds an MFA in poetry.
After taking charge of the department some years back, he started to introduce Python lightly into his math classes. It was nothing extensive; just some simple ways to create shortcuts for longer equations and problems. Most of his students picked it up pretty well.
Then, following a sabbatical trip to India two years ago, where he worked on a variety of app-building projects with other students, he realized that the discipline could be used in studies outside of just math. He pitched the idea to other department heads at Beaver and, after rigorous planning, it was decided the entire academic curriculum at the school would include coding in some shape.
"The old teaching method — you know, where a teacher says something and you write it down and then take a test — that's about as passive as it gets," he says. "This idea pushes kids to be more actively involved since, by and large, it's something we're both learning together. That leads to a lot of innovative teaching — and a lot of innovative learning, for that matter."
Coding is a vague concept — the term simply refers to the assorted languages programmers use to make computer software operate. Websites, mobile apps and video games are assembled entirely by lines of code. It's someone's job to write these lines — letter-by-letter, symbol-by-symbol — and, as with any other dialect, it takes proper spelling, spacing and punctuation for them to actually make sense.
To learn coding, basically, is to learn a new language.

For some Beaver staff members — especially those with no background in programming or math — learning the language was an intimidating adjustment.
"I'm certainly not a coder," says Lisa Brown, an English teacher and head of the English department at Beaver. "But, like anything, the more I've played around with it the more I've realized there's a lot that's really accessible and understandable."
MacDonald hosted a few training sessions for staff members at the beginning of the summer, where he went through program languages such as Python, and beginner tools such as TurtleBits, a more basic application for creating art and visualizing mathematical algorithms. Other teachers referred to free tutorial sites such as Codeacademy for tips.
Most of the staff recognizes that students might be better versed in programming than they are. But instead of being intimidated, MacDonald says, it's something they're embracing as a way to bring out a more two-sided-conversation approach in the classroom.
"We don't get freaked out if we've got a student who's a better basketball player than the coach," MacDonald says.
"A coach isn't failing if he's got a player who can dunk over him. In the same way, a teacher isn't failing just because he's got a student who might be able to code a little better. Some schools are using this as logic to not teach this kind of material — to me, that doesn't make any sense."
The exact curriculum for the year — or just how staff will be implementing coding into each discipline — is still open-ended.
Brown says she's considering a poetry unit using code language. Kader Adjout, head of the Global History and Social Sciences department, is planning to have his students design — through code — interactive graphs to correlate with their research papers. Tina Farrell, who heads the Performing Arts department, is interested in experimenting with live-coding performances, where students would use software to compose and perform music with scripts they write.
"We're just seeing how things go, measuring students' receptions, then sort of planning on the fly," MacDonald says. "And that's OK. If we were to plan everything for the year right away, it wouldn't be organic; it wouldn't have the student's best interests in mind."
Peter Hutton, Head of Beaver, is in an anxious mood — but a good kind of anxious, like the jitters you might feel before moving to a new city or starting a new job. In a way, that's what he's doing.
Hutton has overseen Beaver since 1992. Along with MacDonald, he's helped spearhead the coding curriculum into place.
"Six or seven years ago, web tools really began to emerge," he tells me, raising his eyebrows for emphasis. "We saw an opportunity to use that to shift the classroom dynamic in a positive way for our kids here."
In addition to bringing students together, he's optimistic it will strengthen relationships between teachers. A seventh grade science teacher and a tenth grade history teacher might not have much to talk about — but with the new curriculum in place, conversations about coding workshops, Wiki ideas or digital shortcuts could be just as practical and relevant for a twelfth grade class as they are for a sixth grade class.
Hutton's not afraid of making mistakes at first, either — nobody at Beaver is. When you're the first to do something, he says, you can't always get it right the first time.
"Hopefully we'll get some things wrong. But we'll be better as a result. Getting too caught up on pretty little outcomes, you know — we just don't run that way."
One thing is for sure, he adds: the current curriculum — which any American who has gone to school in the last century is familiar with — is blatantly outdated.
"Do schools need to change? Absolutely," he says. "We're still preparing our kids to go to work in 1988 . Certainly not 2020."

This video, published in February 2013 by nonprofit group Code.org, argues that 90% of U.S. schools fail to teach computer science or related courses to their students. It's difficult to trace back to when the American education curriculum began. Why, for example, do students at public schools take biology before chemistry? Chemistry before physics? And algebra before geometry? Exact curriculums vary by state, and are amendable based on the area's culture and government. But there's a rough skeletal outline that every school follows and, frankly, has followed for a very long time. Hutton and MacDonald, as well as a handful of other educators and thought-leaders, argue the outline is due for a drastic reinvention — not only in regards to coding, necessarily, but vaguer concepts about teaching style and society. Is it really beneficial to have tenth graders memorize dates in history when they could just as easily Google them on their iPads? Or is it better to focus on how to track down and creatively, and productively, represent that data? "If you want to go historically, the first document was the Report of the Committee of 10 in 1892," says Kelley King, president of the Organization of Educational Historians. "It was this group of National Education Association (NEA) members who sat down and had this debate about what students need going out of high school." The committee agreed there should be a core curriculum, as well as a certain number of years each student would spend in school. It was slightly amended in the 1940s, following the Great Depression, to include a heavier focus on humanities and traditional disciplines — in hopes, mainly, of preparing youth to help bring communities back to their feet after the recession. Yet despite the broad curriculum outline, the real decisions about what will and will not be included are determined at the state level. In Texas, where King lives, there's a public debate every 10 years, where community members, teachers and committees meet to update what's being taught in schools. But when it comes to whether a certain community would agree to shift their curriculums toward tech or coding, King says, it's almost impossible to determine. "It's a bumpy procedure," she says, where politicization and funding come heavily into play. Things have been a certain way for a long time, and with any big change, it's only natural for there to be skeptics. Hutton doesn't believe the education field is one to be viewed as "risk-averse" — the play-it-safe or uphold-the-status-quo methods just aren't cutting it anymore. "We don't need to engineer a workshop so every kid that graduates here becomes a professional programmer," he says. "We just want them to think about new ways to solve issues, and grasp that entrepreneurial mindset early on. It's ... it's just this day and age." Beaver isn't the only school experimenting with tech-heavy classes. In New York City, 20 schools — 10 middle, 10 high — are undergoing a software engineering pilot this year that's adding a computer science course into each institution's curriculum. Two selected teachers will head the class for each school, all of which encompass all five boroughs of the city. Sixth and ninth graders can sign up for the classes; depending on how the program unfolds, the courses could be expanded into other grades in the coming years. One of the main challenges about implementing the classes in the large public system — as opposed to a small, privately funded institution like Beaver — has to do with scheduling and training teachers. "Since this is such a broad curriculum that's taking place in so many different schools, it's been tough to lock down a universal plan of action," says Donald Miller, director of Software Engineering Education for the New York City Department of Education. "Every school has different starting dates, different day-to-day schedules. Private schools have the luxury of designing their own, but when you represent the school district — especially one the size of New York's — there's a lot more smaller things to consider." The reception in the schools in New York has been enthusiastic from both teachers and students. "We've had parents calling us trying to squeeze their kids into these classes — they're full, everyone's been signing up," he says. "This is definitely an in-demand skill that parents want their kids to learn ." In Chestnut Hill, the school day is winding down. Brady, from the calculus class earlier in the day, is finishing up a line of code for an assignment — another self-written script he's designed for class. "The beauty of this is getting some degree of influence. Once we make something, like this" — he points to his screen — "we have a tool that we can actually use in the classroom," he says. "It speeds up class, but it also lets us learn by contributing. If I or someone else has an idea that might make something easier, we can say something — and teachers will listen." MacDonald, sitting on the other side of the table, grins again. "We're unquestionably taking risks with this, yeah — but that's part of what makes this so exciting," he says, scratching his day-old stubble. "There's a lot we haven't learned yet, but that's just the nature of coding. It's always growing and changing. But it would be a big mistake to think we have to master something before we roll it out to our kids." And in the meantime? MacDonald laughs: "The year's just started. Stay tuned." Interested in learning to code? Codeacademy offers interactive tutorials for beginners. You can also tinker with Turtle Bits and MIT's Scratch for free practice. Images: Beaver Country Day School, TurtleBits.net Topics: Apps and Software, coding, computer science, education, Mashable Spotlight, Social Good, U.S., US & World
This video, published in February 2013 by nonprofit group Code.org, argues that 90% of U.S. schools fail to teach computer science or related courses to their students.
It's difficult to trace back to when the American education curriculum began. Why, for example, do students at public schools take biology before chemistry? Chemistry before physics? And algebra before geometry?
Exact curriculums vary by state, and are amendable based on the area's culture and government. But there's a rough skeletal outline that every school follows and, frankly, has followed for a very long time. Hutton and MacDonald, as well as a handful of other educators and thought-leaders, argue the outline is due for a drastic reinvention — not only in regards to coding, necessarily, but vaguer concepts about teaching style and society.
Is it really beneficial to have tenth graders memorize dates in history when they could just as easily Google them on their iPads? Or is it better to focus on how to track down and creatively, and productively, represent that data?
"If you want to go historically, the first document was the Report of the Committee of 10 in 1892," says Kelley King, president of the Organization of Educational Historians.
"It was this group of National Education Association (NEA) members who sat down and had this debate about what students need going out of high school."
The committee agreed there should be a core curriculum, as well as a certain number of years each student would spend in school. It was slightly amended in the 1940s, following the Great Depression, to include a heavier focus on humanities and traditional disciplines — in hopes, mainly, of preparing youth to help bring communities back to their feet after the recession.
Yet despite the broad curriculum outline, the real decisions about what will and will not be included are determined at the state level. In Texas, where King lives, there's a public debate every 10 years, where community members, teachers and committees meet to update what's being taught in schools.
But when it comes to whether a certain community would agree to shift their curriculums toward tech or coding, King says, it's almost impossible to determine. "It's a bumpy procedure," she says, where politicization and funding come heavily into play. Things have been a certain way for a long time, and with any big change, it's only natural for there to be skeptics.
Hutton doesn't believe the education field is one to be viewed as "risk-averse" — the play-it-safe or uphold-the-status-quo methods just aren't cutting it anymore.
"We don't need to engineer a workshop so every kid that graduates here becomes a professional programmer," he says. "We just want them to think about new ways to solve issues, and grasp that entrepreneurial mindset early on. It's ... it's just this day and age."
Beaver isn't the only school experimenting with tech-heavy classes. In New York City, 20 schools — 10 middle, 10 high — are undergoing a software engineering pilot this year that's adding a computer science course into each institution's curriculum.
Two selected teachers will head the class for each school, all of which encompass all five boroughs of the city. Sixth and ninth graders can sign up for the classes; depending on how the program unfolds, the courses could be expanded into other grades in the coming years.
One of the main challenges about implementing the classes in the large public system — as opposed to a small, privately funded institution like Beaver — has to do with scheduling and training teachers.
"Since this is such a broad curriculum that's taking place in so many different schools, it's been tough to lock down a universal plan of action," says Donald Miller, director of Software Engineering Education for the New York City Department of Education. "Every school has different starting dates, different day-to-day schedules. Private schools have the luxury of designing their own, but when you represent the school district — especially one the size of New York's — there's a lot more smaller things to consider."
The reception in the schools in New York has been enthusiastic from both teachers and students.
"We've had parents calling us trying to squeeze their kids into these classes — they're full, everyone's been signing up," he says. "This is definitely an in-demand skill that parents want their kids to learn ."
In Chestnut Hill, the school day is winding down. Brady, from the calculus class earlier in the day, is finishing up a line of code for an assignment — another self-written script he's designed for class.
"The beauty of this is getting some degree of influence. Once we make something, like this" — he points to his screen — "we have a tool that we can actually use in the classroom," he says. "It speeds up class, but it also lets us learn by contributing. If I or someone else has an idea that might make something easier, we can say something — and teachers will listen."
MacDonald, sitting on the other side of the table, grins again.
"We're unquestionably taking risks with this, yeah — but that's part of what makes this so exciting," he says, scratching his day-old stubble. "There's a lot we haven't learned yet, but that's just the nature of coding. It's always growing and changing. But it would be a big mistake to think we have to master something before we roll it out to our kids."
And in the meantime?
MacDonald laughs: "The year's just started. Stay tuned."
Interested in learning to code? Codeacademy offers interactive tutorials for beginners. You can also tinker with Turtle Bits and MIT's Scratch for free practice.
Images: Beaver Country Day School, TurtleBits.net