​Mouse Squad of the Year:

Christopher STEM Leadership Academy in San Jose, California

Best New Mouse Squad:

Nellie N. Coffman Middle School in Cathedral City, California

Let's Hear about Our Winners!

About Christopher STEM Leadership Academy’s Mouse Squad:
This year’s Mouse Squad of the Year winner goes to a special Squad in San Jose, CA. The Squad was made up of 16 girls, most of whom are learning to speak English at the same time as providing support to their whole school! Despite some challenging barriers, the Squad participated in all kinds of amazing projects at their school, while helping support teachers, mentor younger students, and complete all their usual classwork!

What kinds of things did this AMAZING Squad get up to this year? They provided tech support for the entire school, including one-on-one sessions with teachers and school staff. They also made tutorials for their school’s website that show others how to use Google Drive, Chromebooks, and other programs and hardware that are important for learning.

As if that wasn’t enough work, the Squad later assisted with their school district's first ever Tech conference, by providing support with green-screen presentations AND they worked on their Green Activist badges.

Ana Karina, an 8th grader in the Squad, talks about how much her Squad coordinator has helped her this year. She says “In the beginning of Mouse Squad I never wanted to take risks because I thought I would mess it up, and thought I couldn’t do it, so I wasn’t confident. But my instructor, Mr. Inda, taught me that I should always take those risks and have a positive mindset...and I was able to become more confident with what I was doing.”
It is this combination of trying new things, learning about themselves, and supporting their entire school community that made Christopher STEM Leadership Academy our pick for Mouse Squad of the Year! CONGRATS!

About Nellie N. Coffman Middle School:
2015’s Best New Mouse Squad of the Year also comes to us from California! This middle school in Southern California may only have been in action a short time, but they’ve already accomplished an amazing amount!

To start the Squad off with some team spirit, each member created their own avatar, then tie-dyed their uniform shirts together. This team identity obviously paid off, because the Squad went on to complete so many awesome projects during the year.
One of their biggest accomplishments was the creation of an online database of the user manuals and support sites for every peripheral used by teachers at their school. They also created their own help request tickets, customer service feedback cards and rules of operation! This new Squad was so impressive that they even sent a few members to present at the Computer Using Educators Conference. While working on all of those things, all 17 members of the Squad also earned their Mouse Squad Certification badge AND Serious Games Specialist badge!

Check out some of the games they created in Scratch on their way to earning their badges! These games deal with the effect of pollution on our oceans.


Congratulations, NNC Mouse Squad. With all of your hard work and awesome projects, it’s easy to see why you earned our vote for Best New Mouse Squad of the Year!

Thank you Mouse Squads!

It’s amazing to see Mouse Squad students doing such awesome things in their schools, communities and in their own lives. We wish we had more prizes to give out, but remember that, really, everyone in Mouse Squad is a winner for all the great things you do every day!
We can’t wait to see what all of our Mouse Squads will accomplish in the coming year. Until then, keep being awesome, Mouse Squad Nation!