Fourth and fifth-grade Tamaqua Elementary School students typically take two years of coding classes.

But on Friday, they had a rare opportunity to enhance their skills. Google experts interacted with TES students during a 90-minute virtual conference, as they worked on a project under their professional guidance.

Chloe Prezelski, a Google software engineer, led the presentation, which truly hit close to home. Prezelski, from the Pottsville area, is a 2017 Nativity High School graduate, who earned her degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 2021. She completed two internships with Google during her summers, which earned her a full-time position with the global powerhouse.

“I’m interested in education and I love kids,” Prezelski said. “Once I saw this volunteering opportunity, I jumped at it. It also gave me an opportunity to work with kids from back home and that was very exciting for me.

Over 185 participants were on the virtual call.

“I never had coding activities when I was their age, so I was happy to help introduce this technology to them at an early age, which is super important. Prezelski added.”

Students created many different coding projects, combining pictures with sounds. The students use an application called Scratch, while also utilizing Code.org.

TES student Gavin Shannon has coded before, during school, but not otherwise. He’s interested in doing it again, after creating on a baseball project during the workshop.

“It’s really fun, I was surprised. And I thought it was cool that you can tell it what to do - and it does it.”

A few desks over, Jaedon Vidzicki constructed a similar project.

“I made a baseball field with a pitcher, batter and catcher. Adding sounds was one of the harder things. It was really nice to meet the Google people.”

Don’t be fooled, even at young age, these students understood the magnitude of having the opportunity to sit down with a panel of Google experts.

Bruce Wagner said his project included a dog “dancing in the galaxy,” while music played. He said it was challenging, but worth doing. His favorite part of the workshop was meeting the Google employees.

“They’re able to make a lot of money,” Wagner said.

Melissa Scheetz has taught coding at TES since the beginning of her tenure with Tamaqua.

“They’re learning how to follow the directions right now to build a block code. It’s a different language, so they’re learning the basic skills,” said Scheetz. “That’s what I want for them to build on, because the middle school is excellent here. If they go over with that base, they’ll be able to bump up their tech even farther.”

Fifth-grade teacher Megan Berezwick said the Google experience surpassed expectations.

“The kids learned so much from the Google presenters and to see the kids take what they’re listening to, seeing on the screen and actually being able to put it into action is amazing,” Berezwick said.

“These jobs were probably not even around or created when these Google workers were in fifth grade. The students are really learning skills for the future for jobs that have not even been created yet. We are really preparing the kids, with the help of Google, to have little kids who are going to be great members of society, creating these amazing things that we can’t even fathom at this point.”