Girl Scout and Newtown High School Class of 2025 graduate Virginia Lynch was celebrated for earning the Girl Scout Gold Award by establishing an after-school coding club for elementary school students.

She, alongside other Girl Scouts, were honored at Girl Scouts of Connecticut's Girl Scout Gold Award Ceremony on Sunday, June 8, in New Haven.

The Girl Scout Gold Award is considered the most prestigious award in Girl Scouting, and is comparable to Boy Scouts of America’s Eagle Scout merit. To earn it, Girl Scouts must identify an issue in their community, think of how they can address it, and turn those ideas into a tangible plan they follow through on.

For her Gold Award, Lynch introduced third and fourth grade students to coding through an after-school club at Middle Gate Elementary School. The next summer, she ran a coding workshop at C.H. Booth Library open to students in grades 5-8, where they learned how to code by using programming languages such as Scratch and Python.

However, earning a Gold Award is far easier said than done. Girl Scouts have to undergo an intensive journey badge process, a training session, and submit a proposal to be reviewed by the Gold Award Committee.

Once approved, each project involves a minimum of 80 hours of work. It also must be sustainable, meaning it has to be able to exist after the Girl Scout has graduated and moved on to the adult level.

Lynch always knew she wanted to earn a Gold Award, but said she wasn't sure what she wanted to do at first. The idea to do something computer science related came to her because she did coding club when she was in fourth grade.

"And then the Gold Award was basically my excuse to follow through with something that I already wanted to do," Lynch explained.

Her proposal was approved in March 2024. Lynch had reached out to find a supervisor and project advisor, which she said was her computer science teacher Kelly Murphy. She also got permission from Middle Gate Principal Christopher Geissler to establish the after-school coding club at the school.

Lynch prepared all of her lesson plans in advance, and officially started the club in spring last year. Each class started with slideshow presentations, where Lynch gave students lessons, showed them example projects, and occasionally did a project in front of them at the board.

From there, students went off and tried to make their own games and projects using Scratch, a block-based coding language where people drag-and-drop blocks to create code. People can save their games and make them available for others to play on Scratch's website.

Lynch said they would always finish class with some kind of game like Blooket, an online quiz tool for classrooms and homework assignments.

The platform is similar to the online game-based learning platform Kahoot! and lets users browse preexisting question sets or create their own on different topics. Users can then create a live or asynchronous game and get detailed reports once it’s over, letting them identify knowledge gaps and see what students need to work on.

Lynch said she would change the Blooket after several classes to give students something new to work on and practice what they were learning.

Out of the coding club's various activities, Lynch said her students liked making games most of all.

"That's what they always said in my feedback surveys ... I'm glad I was able to share that with them," Lynch said.

Lynch was not alone in teaching students either. Her friends David Baghdady, Britta Petersen, and her brother, Henry Lynch, helped her run the class.

Having high schoolers do the teaching was important to Lynch, as she believes kids like being taught by high school students — in other words, older kids. She said high school students can provide a unique teaching experience since she, like some others her age, grew up with programs like Scratch.

Lynch's brother also helped with the summer coding workshop at Booth Library.

While the summer coding workshop was not in Lynch's initial proposal, she wanted to try teaching a different age group and added it onto the project.

Even after earning her Gold Award, Lynch said the after-school coding club at Middle Gate will continue every spring without her. She believes the summer coding workshop at Booth Library be held annually as well, so long as library staff is interested.

Lynch herself got an early start with coding using Scratch, but never felt satisfied with coding in school. Computer science education, she said, felt minimal, hands off, and not challenging enough.

This lead Lynch to want to encourage more challenging computer science education and teach students how to code through hands-on, interactive lessons. By introducing computer science to students at a young age, Lynch said it gives them the confidence to pursue it in the future should they want to.

Lynch said she plans to major in computer science, with a potential double major in something else.

Earning the Gold Award may have taken a lot of time and effort, but Lynch said she is extremely grateful to everyone who helped her. She said Murphy, Baghdady, and her mom, Sarah Lynch, were all there for her since the beginning, when her project was in its proposal phase.

Their support, Lynch said, was essential to her success by providing feedback or assurance when she needed it most.

Lynch was also grateful to the larger Girl Scout community, who she said is very accepting and encouraging. Between the interview for her project proposal and the award ceremony in early June, Lynch said she felt as supported as she did accomplished.

“They made me feel proud,” Lynch explained. “And it's like a great experience because you did something and other people recognize you for it."

Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.