Breakout Mentors — Los Angeles Area Kids Coding with UCLA Mentors

We caution parents to not think of coding concepts in isolation. Too many courses introduce one concept at a time and demonstrate it with short 5 line programs. Learning to code involves the concepts as building blocks, yet the hard part isn’t grasping how that individual building block is used. It is actually putting it into practice and being able to combine it with other concepts to achieve the desired result.

Our students learn all the important coding concepts as they are ready: loops, conditionals, variables, and functions. Arrays and other basic data structures, object-oriented programming, recursion, and more. However, it isn’t a theoretical understanding of these concepts. From day one our students write code from the ground up and start to work on larger code bases. The mentor assists with the many key skills necessary beyond the individual concepts, like planning ahead in game design and troubleshooting when things go wrong.

How long does it take to become good at playing the piano? Or doing mathematics? An even tougher question: what is the overall goal of education? In short, everyone learns at different speeds and our goal is to challenge at the perfect pace for each student. That means thinking of it as a long-term goal and understanding the long-term result is worth the effort. We find the more the student achieves in their coding education, the more valuable the sessions become! We are able to move towards intermediate projects with hundreds of lines of code or really dive into a complex CS concept to demonstrate the power and simplicity it provides. So we hope that our students don’t stop learning at an arbitrary point that is “good enough”. However, we also understand the need for external markers and goals. For example, we work with students to be ready for AP CS A or to participate in a coding competition. In these cases, we can drive towards those goals and provide assessments on time estimates.

Breakout Mentors can work in almost any programming language and we are always open to special requests. We have had students use Scratch, Python, Java, Code.org drag-and-drop, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, C++, C, Unity, Godot engine, iOS Swift, and probably some more I’m forgetting!

However, the majority of our students want our recommendation for the best programming language for them, which is often Python. It is important we stick with one rather than bounce around, since the language isn’t as important as learning the logic: understanding the flow of the code with loops, conditionals, variables, and functions. The mentor will teach the many skills necessary beyond the individual concepts, how to plan ahead and debug.

At Breakout Mentors the first session is risk free with a satisfaction guarantee. If you don’t feel it is a fit, we will issue a 100% refund. We put a lot of effort into determining the mentor who is the right long-term fit, so want families who are committed to continuing if we deliver a great experience. That’s how we differ from some of our competitors — we don’t advertise a free trial, only to have one teacher do the trial class, then switch to someone else.

Yes, absolutely! We work with many complete beginners who may benefit from a one-on-one mentor as their first coding experience. Some kids learn at a different pace, others want the personal connection, and plenty just want to make sure the initial experience is amazing. Our goal is to adjust the curriculum to the student’s age, skill level, and interests, we have perfected our approach and curriculum for the last decade!