Code Ninjas is a good concept, but it is not being implemented by HQ or the franchisees in a way that can promote growth and a passion for coding with young children. If anything, it's going to deter kids from coding as they get older because of the frustration they feel when they are doing their exercises (both with and without a Sensei's help).
The curriculum is absolute trash. It is not written for children under the age of 12 to be able to work on successfully and not become completely frustrated with. Keep in mind that the age group Code Ninjas gears itself to are ages 7-14. The little ones have the most trouble. Most student in the program tend to drop out once they reach yellow belt (the second level) because it is nothing but typing Javascript. The curriculum is geared more towards the middle school aged reading level and logical skills, which makes me wonder if they even consulted experienced educators when designing the curriculum.
Their game development platform is always broken and full of bugs. It's terrible to think that professional software developers designed this thing and released something that clearly isn't tested very well and is full of bugs. A lot of the time Sensei just have to make up excuses for why something won't work for the kids when their code is correct. What are we teaching these kids if we are trying to get them to learn coding on a game development platform that was designed with clearly low standards?
I'm sure franchise experience varies, but I am not paid nearly enough for the amount of work they expect me to do and the amount of garbage I have to put up with. Expect to become a teacher. Expect to teach kids to read, write, spell, and type in addition to trying to teach them how to code. Expect to clean the bathrooms and the kids urine that somehow ends up all over the floor on a daily basis. My franchisee has no business sense whatsoever. Scheduling is sporadic and only done on a weekly basis. We never have enough sensei to cover the amount of kids in the dojo. Our center is kind of dirty. We run out of cleaning supplies and it was takes forever for the franchisee to restock them back so the dojo ends up filthy. Senseis are not trained. At all. I had to learn how to do the job from one of the students because I had no clue what I was doing or what was where. Some sensei (including the lead sensei) are lazy and sit there on their phones while students needed help. Only the responsible ones end up doing a majority of the work (cleaning the dojo, teaching the kids, helping the kids, talking to parent, etc). Majority of the sensei are high schoolers and have no concept of what it means to be the adult in the room. We are paid to teach these kids to code and help them when they get stuck, not to sit around playing with the toys in the center without engaging the kids. My center director was more worried about the number of bodies that sign up for the program than whether or not the kid fits in the age group and can actually be successful in the program. So some six year olds were allowed to join and were a complete distraction to the other students trying to work on their curriculum. They are not ready to be in this kid of a setting.
