“So when the computer man next door told me what he was doing, I invited him to speak to my math students and he told about what he did and how he did it and the kids got so excited they begged him to teach them. So without asking permission or anything else, I set up a Wednesday night and Saturday class at the office of Control Data Corporation, where my neighbor came and taught us how to program in a language called Fortran II. Well, the kids talked about it.
“They got so excited that I went to the principal of the school and said that I, as a teacher, am required to do hall duty, I am required to do some other things. Could my hall duty be a computerized study hall? They said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I have all of these kids who want to learn it and we can’t sit in the office of Control Data anymore. At most, it holds eight people and I have 30-40 kids coming down.’ Well, they couldn’t believe it, either, and Control Data couldn’t believe it. And they gave me a computer study hall. I had the first computer study hall — that is, a no-credit study hall. 45 kids in a room built for 30. I’d sit on the floor between the rows and take notes, just like the kids did, and we were taught by the kids who learned the fastest. I don’t think anybody would believe they could walk into a class in a high school and have a 15-year-old at the board lecturing … and by this time, I got two other teachers interested. Three teachers sitting on the floor taking notes, learning how to program a computer. We ran this study hall for two years. “