“Is Erin Roberts here?” Mrs. Clark asked, scanning the room as if someone might have slipped by her during the phone fiasco. I knew all the other kids, either from my classes or from around school. Mostly we were sixth-graders. Maya and Grace were the only seventh-graders.
“Hmm. Doesn’t look like it,” she said, setting the roll-call sheet aside. “Okay, then. Let’s get started.”
Finally!
The computer lab rules said students couldn’t turn on the computers until the teacher gave permission. I raised my pointer finger and hovered it over the power button. I was waiting for Mrs. Clark to tell us to “boot up.” I could tell some other kids were doing the same thing.
Instead, what we heard was: “I’ve set out some tables in the back. Gather around.”
Mrs. Clark hefted three big brown paper bags into her arms. They’d been tucked in a corner where I hadn’t noticed them. “This way.” She walked toward the back of the room.
Wait. What? My finger twitched. I must have misunderstood.
I swiveled my chair toward Mrs. Clark and raised my hand.
“Come along, Lucy,” she said as most kids got up and went to the tables she’d arranged at the back of the room.
I stayed at the computer station and raised my hand higher, this time waving it.
“Lucy,” Mrs. Clark said. “You can’t have a question already . . .”
“But—” I did. I had a thousand questions, the first one being, “Am I in the right place?” Maybe coding club met somewhere else, because I’d expected to be sitting at computers, not at empty tables in the back of the room. How was I going to be the first black girl to win a Turing Award—it’s like a Nobel Prize for coding—for my coding skills if we didn’t actually use the computers?
I opened my mouth to say all that, but Mrs. Clark cut me off. “Hang on to your question, okay?” She looked at me over her glasses. “There will be time at the end of our club time to answer everything.”
“But . . . I . . . We . . . App . . .” My pointer finger felt heavy, as if it had a brick attached. I pulled it from the power button and walked slowly to the back of the room. Some of the other kids who’d stayed at their computers shuffled along with me—it wasn’t like we had a choice.
Mrs. Clark broke us into groups, setting a brown bag in front of each cluster. “Sophia, Maya, and Lucy—you’ll be partners. You can take the middle table.”
Ugh. Now I was being grouped with people who didn’t even care about coding (well, Sophia said it was important to her, but I didn’t believe her). I thought maybe this was a cruel joke. Or a dream. In a few minutes, I was going to wake up and discover that I’d fallen asleep in math and that coding club hadn’t started yet.
Unfortunately, I was wide awake.
First no computer, then no coding, and now my group was made up of one girl who was my mortal enemy and one who intimidated me . . . what more could happen?
The computer lab door opened.
The principal walked in, followed by a girl I didn’t recognize.
“You must be Erin,” Mrs. Clark said warmly. “You’re joining the seventh grade today, right?”
The girl nodded, her blond hair falling over her glasses. When I looked a little closer, it seemed as though she might have been crying. She didn’t say anything.
“Welcome to coding club.” Mrs. Clark led her over to my table. “We’re just getting started. You can join this group.” We had three people while the others all had four. Now we were even.
Just because I was mad that we weren’t coding yet didn’t mean I couldn’t be polite. I imagined it would be hard to start at a new school after classes had already begun. Plus, Erin looked like she needed someone friendly, and I didn’t trust the others at my table to be that person.
“Hi,” I said.
Erin smiled faintly at me and then looked away toward the door. I think if Principal Stephens hadn’t closed it when he left, she might have made a run for the hallway.
“All right.” Mrs. Clark rubbed her hands together just like she did in math class when she was excited about introducing something new. “Don’t touch the bags. That’s for later. We’re going to start today’s session with a writing assignment.” She handed out pencils and index cards. “On your own, without help from your group, write down instructions for how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”
She pulled out a stopwatch. “You have two minutes.” She set the timer. “Go.”
Um, what? A peanut butter and jelly sandwich? What did this have to do with coding? I raised my hand.
Mrs. Clark gave me a look that unmistakably meant, “Later, Lucy.” So I dropped it, figuring the faster we did her activity, the faster we’d get back to the computers.
I grabbed the card and scribbled:
Take two pieces of bread. Open the peanut butter. Spread it on one side of the bread. Open the jelly and spread it on the other side. Put the halves together. Ta-da, peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
I was done in about three seconds. I sat back from the table and watched the others in my group. Maya was drawing a picture to accompany her instructions. She was a really good artist. Sometimes she did drawings to go with her articles in the paper. I wanted to say something to her, but what? She probably didn’t even notice I was in her group.
Sophia had written “Rules” on the top of her card and was writing a novel-length book in very small letters about the sandwich. I thought she’d never finish . . . and then she asked for another card.
Erin was sitting back in her chair, like me. But unlike me, she hadn’t filled out her card. Instead, she contemplated the ground while biting a fingernail.
I turned away so she wouldn’t think I was staring at her.
Other than the scratch of pencils on paper, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the clock. After what seemed like a million ticks, Mrs. Clark collected our index cards.
She shuffled them, saying, “I’m going to make a sandwich. I just don’t know how . . .” And after an overly dramatic pause, she added, “Oh, look, I’ll use Lucy’s instructions.” She held up my card, putting the rest aside. “Bradley, come help me.”
Bradley was a joker, but he was also the second best student in my math class. As he went to stand by Mrs. Clark, I wished we were in the same group. He was with Maddie and Mark, really funny twins. That group was bound to be more exciting than mine. Plus, with Bradley being so good at math . . . I bet he could help me with my app.
Mrs. Clark handed him my instructions. “Read them step by step,” she said.
“‘Take two pieces of bread.’” He over-emphasized the words.
She raised one of the paper bags and pulled out a brand-new loaf of bread. She stared at the loaf, turning it around in her hands.
I wanted to hurry this along. It was a waste of precious coding time.
“Two pieces . . .” Mrs. Clark tore the plastic bread bag down the middle and picked out one slice of bread and a bit of crust from a second slice. “A crust is a ‘piece of bread.’ Isn’t it?” she asked Bradley.
I blurted out, “I meant that you should undo the twist tie to open the bag and take the first two slices. No one likes the crusts.”
Mrs. Clark stared at me as if I was speaking an alien language. She turned back to Bradley. “What’s next?”
“‘Open the peanut butter.’”
She took a jar out of the paper bag and set it on the table. “We are using sunflower butter,” she explained. “In case anyone has allergies. But we’ll pretend it’s peanut.” She turned to Bradley. “How should I open it?”
He gave her a blank look.
“You mean Lucy’s instructions don’t say?” she said.
Bradley got a twinkle in his eye. “You could slam it on the desk!” Kids chuckled.
“Other ideas?” Mrs. Clark asked.
Taking their cue from Bradley, kids started spouting out crazy ideas. Sammy suggested dropping the jar from the school roof. Maddie and Mark came up with a plan that involved pliers and a hammer. Another girl at Sammy’s table, Leila, had an idea that involved ropes and pulleys and a sharp battle-ax. Mrs. Clark had to cut her off because she was taking forever to describe it.
I heard a small chuckle next to me and saw that Erin had raised her head. Now she was interested.
“No. No. No,” I said when I couldn’t take it anymore. “What I meant was to use your wrist to open the jar.”
Mrs. Clark hit the lid with her wrist and frowned. “It didn’t work.”
“You have to wrap your fingers around the lid and turn it,” Sammy said.
She wrapped her fingers loosely but didn’t clasp the jar. The lid swiveled around under her palm.
It went on like this for a while, until Sophia said, “Put your hand over the lid, lower it until the jar touches your palm, tighten your fingers, and now rotate the lid counterclockwise while holding the jar still.”
Mrs. Clark did exactly what Sophia said, and it worked! I was annoyed that she’d figured out how to get Mrs. Clark to open the jar, but at least we were making progress.
With the jar finally open, Mrs. Clark asked Bradley what was next. “Lucy said, ‘Spread it on one side of the bread.’”
“With what?” she asked. When he shrugged, Mrs. Clark stuck her fingers in the jar and scooped out a glob. She spread it along the crust edge.
“I meant . . . ,” I started, but I was getting the point. My instructions weren’t very good.
In the end, Mrs. Clark handed me a sandwich with one plain piece of bread and a smear of sunflower butter on the bit of crust. I’d only said to spread jelly on the “side,” so she’d spread it on the side of the sunflower butter jar. Since I hadn’t made it clear which halves went together, she’d rolled the bread and crust together like a burrito. I took the “sandwich” from her sticky fingers, wondering if anyone in the club had thought to mention a knife. Or a napkin.
Now it was our turn. Using what was in the paper bags at each of our tables, we had to make a sandwich following someone else’s instructions. Since Erin hadn’t filled out her card and mine was already used, Maya and I read Sophia’s instructions while Sophia and Erin read Maya’s. Turned out, Sophia had done everything the rest of us missed. She mentioned a knife and a napkin. And she’d suggested putting the sandwich on a plate. Her index-card novel was perfect, and so was the sandwich we made.
When Mrs. Clark asked her what her method was, Sophia explained, “Writing rules for sports isn’t so different. You have to think of every way someone might misunderstand and cover for that.”
When had Sophia gotten so smart? I felt disappointed and a little angry that she had done better than me. This was supposed to be my club. Sophia had her own clubs.
I hoped at least the groups were temporary. Maybe next week I could be with Bradley or Leila.
“Okay, kids, that’s all for today,” Mrs. Clark said as she wiped the sunflower butter and jelly off her fingers with a napkin. “I want you to think about what today’s exercise might mean, and tell me what you came up with at our next club meeting. See you all next Monday.”
Whoa. I raised my hand. “This is coding club, not cooking, right?”
Mrs. Clark nodded.
“So when are we going to make an app?”
“Slow down, Lucy,” Mrs. Clark told me. “It’s not that easy. Plus, you’ve just taken your first step.”
“But I need to make an app. How is this,” I said, waving my hand at the jars of sunflower butter and jelly, “going to help?”
Apparently I wasn’t the only one who thought making sandwiches was not what we had signed up for. Other kids started speaking up.
“Yeah—I want to make an app to track hockey scores.”
“And I need an app to find ice-cream trucks!”
“I want to make something that can do my homework for me!”
I chimed in. “My uncle has cancer, and I have to make an app to help him.”
The room fell silent, and everyone turned toward me.
Mrs. Clark took a long look at me. “Lucy, that is important, but we need some basic skills before we try to help cancer patients—or find ice cream.” She had that look she got when she changed her mind about something. She pointed at each of our groups. “Look at your sandwiches.”
“Mine is a jar of peanut butter sitting on a folded loaf of bread,” Sammy said, looking at the mess on his table.
“You’re lucky you got a loaf of bread,” Bradley snorted. “I got two jars and no bread. I can’t believe I forgot to mention bread!”
Mrs. Clark smiled. “Now you know about input and output. Your instructions are input, and the sandwich is output. What you put into your coding in a computer determines exactly what comes out the other side—just like your instructions for how to make a sandwich.” She gathered her things and held the door open for us to leave. “That’s it for today.”
I smiled at Mrs. Clark. I had a feeling this coding thing was going to be a bit different than what I’d imagined.