Classes & Curriculum

Here is a comprehensive list of all of the classes that ACM Teach LA provides! You can find more information about what the class is about, its learning goals, and its curriculum. Part of our mission is making our education truly accessible, and that involves open-sourcing as much information as possible: everything our instructors have, you'll find here.

We're still hashing out renewing existing partnerships and seeking new ones - if you're interested in working with us, please shoot us an email at acmteachla@gmail.com!

This page is a current work in progress, bear with us! We're currently digitizing and standardizing all of our internal documentation.

Intro to Programming with Python

8 one-hour classes • no experience required • our partnered schools

Perfect for students with no previous coding experience, this class emphasizes an understanding of basic programming principles that students will use throughout their journey in computer science, while also teaching one of the most popular, powerful, and easy-to-learn languages.

Learning Goals (click to expand)

students will:

• understand how to solve problems with computers
• use different basic data types (integers, floats, strings, booleans)
• manipulate data using operators (arithmetic and boolean)
• declare and use variables to write clean and efficient code
• use conditional statements to control the flow of code
• understand how to use loops to iterate over objects
• use and manipulate lists to store sets of data
• write and use functions to modularize their code

have questions? contact our curriculum lead Nikhil!

Class Page Curriculum Outline

Computing Principles with Scratch

10+ one-hour classes • no experience required • friendly for young children • our partnered schools

Perfect for young students with minimal computing or coding experience, this curriculum uses Scratch to expose our students to basic computer science principles in a way that is engaging and allows them to exercise maximum creativity.

Learning Goals (click to expand)

students will:

• understand the basics of a Scratch project
• control sprites with commands in an event loop
• use conditional statements to listen for user input
• create complicated patterns with sensor blocks
• design and develop their own Scratch story

have questions? contact one of our curriculum leads: Eden or Milo

Intro to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

20+ one-hour classes • precalculus and some coding experience recommended • our partnered schools

This course aims to delve deep into one of the most popular topics of computer science, starting by giving students a strong foundation in mathematical concepts, and then applying them to train their own neural networks.

Learning Goals (click to expand)

students will:

• understand what AI and ML are, and their differences
• learn about deep learning and its applications
• differentiate between classification and regression
• use Python and related libraries in Google Colab to manipulate data
• learn and apply linear regression to real-world datasets
• understand the intuition behind gradient descent
• learn and apply logistic regression to real-world datasets
• understand probability, Bayes' Theorem, and binary cross-entropy loss at a conceptual level
• walk through the building blocks of a neural network
• understand the challenges behind optimization and the applications of regularization
• conceptually grasp and implement convolutional neural networks
• explore the ethics behind applications of AI and ML

have questions? contact our curriculum lead Ava!

Class Page

App Development with React Native

25+ classes • no experience required • our partnered schools

A year-long course that aims to give students a wide set of practical skills and project experience: students learn how to build websites with HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and then use those tools to build cross-platform mobile apps with React Native.

Learning Goals (click to expand)

students will:

• coming soon!

have questions? contact our curriculum lead Matt!

Class Page

Intro to Web Development

10+ one-hour classes • no experience required • our partnered schools

Great for students with no previous coding experience, this class teaches students the basic building blocks of the web (HTML, CSS, JS), and gives them hands-on experience in building their own websites.

Learning Goals (click to expand)

students will:

• understand the technology involved behind a website
• learn how to use HTML to outline the structure of a website
• learn basic CSS to style elements on a page
• learn to use CSS Grid to create different layouts
• learn basic programming fundamentals in Javascript: variables, loops, and functions
• understand how to use JS to manipulate web pages
• finish two practical projects: a personal website and a quiz
• use git and GitHub to keep track of their code
• deploy their projects using GitHub Pages

have questions? contact our curriculum lead Matt!