(San Antonio) -- 100Kin10, a national organization dedicated to solving the STEM teacher shortage by 2021, announced today that Youth Code Jam has been selected to join the final cohort of programmatic partners. Youth Code Jam joins diverse, pioneering organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, NASA, and the US Department of Education and is the first and only San Antonio organization to partner with 100Kin10.

“It’s an honor to be selected to join this powerful national network of leading-edge organizations working collaboratively and creatively to solve the STEM teacher shortage,” said Youth Code Jam founder and executive director Debi Pfitzenmaier. “We are excited to learn from our new partners, bring best practices back to the Alamo STEM Ecosystem and contribute to the cross-sector impact model of preparing future-ready students through high quality teacher professional development efforts.” Youth Code Jam is a Texas Education Agency-approved provider of teacher continuing professional education.

As part of its commitment to the work of 100Kin10, Youth Code Jam has pledged to design, build and implement bilingual, standards-aligned computer programming content designed to increase the confidence of elementary school teachers and librarians in introducing computational thinking and computer science in their schools.

This is the seventh and final cohort of partners for 100Kin10 during its first 10 years. The organization launched in 2011 as an answer to President Obama’s call during his 2011 State of the Union address to train 100,000 new STEM teachers in a decade. Organizations are accepted as 100Kin10 partners following a rigorous vetting process, conducted by a team of partner reviewers and a national selection panel of experts in education and STEM. Applicants are considered for partnership based on their organization strength and STEM and teaching expertise; clear, meaningful commitments toward the 100,000 STEM teacher goal; and interest in and capacity to build the 100Kin10 movement. 100Kin10 is on track to exceed its goal through its network of best-in-class organizations and networked impact model of training.

“This final group, including Youth Code Jam, is a welcome addition as we enter our final push in achieving our goal and look toward the future in solving systemic issues around the teacher shortage in America,” said Talia Milgrom-Elcott, 100Kin10’s executive director. “Each organization is doing incredible, inspiring work to build the movement for better, bolder and more accessible STEM education. We’re thrilled to have them as our newest partners in collaboration, learning and continuous improvement to creatively solve the STEM teacher crisis.”

ABOUT YOUTH CODE JAM: Youth Code Jam makes coding fun, sociable and accessible to kids from 7 to 17. The 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization provides innovative, impactful and family-focused out-of-school time, hands-on computing programs for K-12 students as well as teacher professional development designed to bring computer science to every school and every classroom. This work is accomplished by changing the narrative from “teaching kids to code” to creating environments where all students can be successful, creative problem solvers with code. To learn more, visit https://www.youthcodejam.org/.

ABOUT 100Kin10: 100Kin10 is network of best-in-class organizations collectively responding to the moonshot call to put 100,000 new, excellent STEM teachers in America’s classrooms by 2021. Though their pioneering networked impact approach, 100Kin10 encourages multi-sector collaboration and provides the vision and resources to help nonprofits, foundations, academic institutions and businesses meet their ambitious commitments to educate the next generation of innovators and problem solvers. More information is available at www.100kin10.org.

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