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Why Every High School Student Should Learn to Code

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Blog — Career Tips Why Every High School Student Should Learn to Code

4 min read

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By Melissa Carter

Senior Designer

Juno College

If you’re a parent searching for ways to help your child level up, learning to code is an option that all young people should consider exploring.

Not only does coding help develop new skills and passions, but the tech industry continues to grow exponentially every year, and tech jobs in Toronto in particular are thriving. Spending some time learning web development is a great decision for a number of reasons. Here are a few reasons in particular why we know high school is the perfect time to start coding.

Decide on a Direction

High school can be a really stressful time for teenagers. They’re still young and trying to discover who they are, but are simultaneously faced with one of the most important decisions of their lives - what to study, and ultimately what career to pursue. This early decision making process is hard, and is why many Juno students are adults who are returning to education after their first careers didn’t offer everything they expected.

Instead of exploring coding in a few years after an initial area of study didn’t pan out, trying it out now is a great option. Getting a taste of coding early on is an excellent way for students to discover whether they love web development and help them narrow in on a direction to pursue.

In most cases, our students discover a love for coding and technology, but even if they decide coding isn’t for them, it’s an impressive new skill to have under their belt going forward.

Career Acceleration

With the increasing number of tech jobs in Canada, traditional educational institutions have already realized that teaching young people to code is vital. Provinces like British Columbia and Nova Scotia have made coding a mandatory part of early learning, with children as young as grade one exploring it through the use of robots and programming. Ontario is still one of the provinces where coding knowledge is considered optional, offering some support and resources for teachers to integrate coding into their teaching if they choose to.

But, even if coding became a mandatory part of education nationwide, it’s still too late for these changes to benefit older students. Though some high schools offer elective computer science courses, in most cases, if high schoolers want to learn to code in a hands on environment, they need to do it outside their normal classroom.

That’s where part time evening and weekend courses like those offered at Juno come in. Learning an in-demand skill like coding is the perfect way to gear up for a job in tech. If students take a part time course and decide that coding is a career path they want to pursue, they can also carry on to take our full-time Web Development Bootcamp.

With high graduation rates and entrance salaries, and one-on-one job support, graduates of our bootcamps are launched into the tech industry with in-demand skills and an incredibly promising career.

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Master In-Demand Skills

Whether they decide to pursue coding as a career or not, taking a part-time coding class is a great way for students to develop a variety of new skills that can help them excel in almost any industry. Learning to code, especially in a hands-on environment like Juno, can help students build skills like problem solving, critical thinking, and attention to detail. Coding also helps bring out creativity that might otherwise remain untapped.

Learning to code in a classroom is also a great way to perfect both independent work skills and group work ethics. While you might picture coders sitting at a computer typing away in a solitary work environment, there is also a lot of collaboration involved in the tech industry, so learning to code can help improve skills in both these areas.

Ultimately, though web development may seem like a niche topic to invest time in, learning to code can nurture skills that can be applied across any industry.

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Join a Supportive, Diverse Community

One of the best parts of joining the development community, especially the community at Juno, is the supportive and inclusive environment. We pride ourselves on the fact that we offer a diverse community of students, alumni, and staff, who are all passionate about and committed to web development.

If your teen is looking for a learning environment that will support them throughout their journey and help them discover whether coding is the right path for them, Juno is the right place to be. With instructors that all work in the tech industry, admissions staff dedicated to helping you build a unique learning journey, and mentors who were students themselves just a few years ago, we offer a community of learners that was created to welcome everyone.


Intrigued by the idea of encouraging your high schooler to learn to code?

Juno offers free Coding Workshops on a regular basis to give attendees a beginner friendly, hands on introduction to HTML and CSS (the foundational languages of front-end coding). These workshops are a great way to try out coding in a risk-free environment, and to find out whether it’s something that they’re interested in pursuing. You could even attend a workshop together!

If you’re serious about helping your teen learn to code and ready to invest, we also offer Web Development courses that run during evenings or weekends. Or, if they’ve got some time off and want to learn at a quicker pace, we also offer an accelerated version of these courses that run full-time for one week, so that they can learn the same great subject matter on a shorter deadline.

No matter which format they choose to take our courses in, they’ll leave knowing how to build a professional website from scratch using HTML and CSS.

If you’re interested in learning more about web development at Juno, you and your teen can come in for a campus tour to see the space, have your questions answered, and meet with a member of our admissions team to make sure Juno is right for them!

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