O'Fallon Township High School 2026–27
Panther CS is a computer science club at O'Fallon Township High School. The thing we're building is a real page for every club in the building. Meetings are an hour a week after school, and coming to one is all it takes to be here — nothing to bring, nothing to know first, and nothing due unless you take something on.
No experience assumed · $0 · one hour a week · nothing due in between, unless you join a track
// three doors, one club
// The learning track
This is the open track, and it's how most people are in this club. One hour a week after school, drop in when you want, no application and nothing you're expected to know beforehand. You're not signing up for a project and nobody will hand you one.
You don't have to sign up first, pick a track, or bring anything. Sit in on a meeting, see whether you like the room, and come back if you do. Plenty of people spend their first few meetings mostly watching, and that's a normal way to start.
A few minutes on what happened since last week, and then it depends on the week. Speaker weeks, every second or third: someone who does this for a living takes twenty minutes and then answers whatever you want to ask them. Working weeks, the rest: you work through The Odin Project — free, open source, starts at zero — in a room with other people doing the same thing, with officers and track members on hand when you get stuck. Whoever's stuck puts it on the projector and the room works it out together. That room is the entire point: the same wall that takes forty minutes to get past with other people is the one that makes you quit alone at home. We end on time.
Come to the meeting and you owe nobody anything — nothing assigned, nothing graded, no deadline anyone will hand you. If you want to help build the thing, that's a committed track, and a track costs real hours; we tell you exactly how many before you say yes. Both are members in good standing. It's built to fit around a sport or a season, and the meeting slot is picked so competition weekends don't kill it.
// the door into building
Every meeting ends with thirty seconds on what went live that week and who did it. If you ever want to be on that list, you just say so — to any officer, after any meeting. There's no form, no application, and no audition. You can say it in week two or in March.
Moving between tracks in either direction is normal here, and it is never a judgment. People step up when they're ready and step back when a season or a hard semester says so, and both are an ordinary thing to do.
// What we're building
O'Fallon Township High School has roughly a hundred student organizations. About six of them have a page of their own. The rest are a name on a static list, and a few keep separate sites nobody can find.
~100
clubs and organizations at OTHS
6
of them have a real page today
1
directory, built and run by students, to fix that
Most clubs here are functionally invisible. Freshmen can't find them, parents don't know they exist, and members applying to college have nothing to link to as evidence of what they were part of.
A page addresses all three: what the club is, who runs it, when and where it meets, what's coming up, and photos. Pages start from a shared template, so a club can get one up quickly and then grow it as it needs more.
This fall
Pilot: 2–5 clubs. Friendly ones, to prove the template, the workflow, and the review process before anything scales.
As they're ready
Pages go live one at a time. No launch event, no held-back reveal: when a club's page is finished and reviewed, it ships, and the directory is bigger than it was. Every member who contributed is named on it.
Spring
Scale past 50 pages. Plus the parts that need real JavaScript — search, filtering by meeting day, a proper index.
Late spring
Open to all ~100 clubs. Any organization at OTHS that wants a page gets one.
See it for yourself
The first pilot pages aren't up yet. They'll be linked here once they are, so you can look at a real one rather than take our word for it.
// The two committed tracks
Half of what makes a club page worth having is the code, and half of it is the layout, the photos, and the words. Both tracks ship to the live site with your name on it, both are in the same room for the same hour, and both cost about two to three hours a week including the meeting. You don't have to pick one to be in this club — the learning track above is a perfectly good place to stay all year. You choose when you're ready, you can switch, and "not sure yet" is a normal answer for a good while.
Track 01
The club pages themselves, the search and filtering on top of them, and the platform underneath. It's a committed track — join it and your first change goes live in week one, from a browser tab on your school Chromebook.
Track 02
A layout that holds together, a photo worth looking at, and a description that tells a stranger what a club actually does. No code required, and no Figma on day one.
// Speakers
Every second or third week someone from outside the building joins us — mostly over Zoom, twenty minutes plus questions. Working developers, OTHS alumni now in the field, designers, and local professionals. Bring the questions you'd never get to ask in class.
Work in software or design? Come speak →
Twenty minutes, over Zoom, from your desk.
Photo this fall
Photo this fall
Photo this fall
// Straight answers
Yes. That's the normal way to be in this club, and it has a name — the learning track. Nothing is assigned between meetings, nobody is going to hand you a deadline, and you don't have to commit to a project to be welcome in the room. Come for the hour, take what you want out of it, and go home.
No. Most members will start with none, and nothing on your first day requires any. The first meeting assumes you have never opened a code editor, and the curriculum starts from zero on purpose.
Yes, and not as a side role. Design, writing, and photography are half of what makes the directory worth having, and someone who can sit down with a club sponsor and write clearly about it is as necessary here as the people writing the code. Drawing, photos, captions, being the person who makes messy information make sense — we take all of it.
And getting in is just asking. No portfolio, no application, no audition — tell an officer you want in and you're on the track. Here's what that track does.
No. There are three ways to be in this club and only two of them are a choice you have to make. The learning track is the open one — come to meetings, learn in the room, owe nobody anything — and staying there all year is a completely normal way to be a member. The other two are committed: building, and design, writing & photography. Each has a page saying what it costs before you say yes.
The sign-up form asks, and "not sure" is a perfectly good answer — a lot of people give it. You can switch whenever, in either direction, and nobody treats that as a judgment.
Your school Chromebook is enough. Everything runs in a browser tab — nothing gets installed, and nothing needs a district password. Everyone uses the same setup, so there's no laptop-versus-Chromebook divide in the room.
Two honest answers, because there are two ways to be here. Drop in: one hour a week after school, and nothing in between. That's the whole of it. Join a track: roughly two to three hours a week including the meeting, because you've taken on a piece of a real site and other people are waiting on it. In the spring a track costs a little more, and we'll say so in January rather than let you find out. Either way it's built to fit around a sport or a season, and the meeting slot is picked so competition weekends don't kill it.
No. Building a website is a useful skill for a future business owner, journalist, engineer, artist, or nurse. Come find out whether you like it — that is a completely legitimate reason to join.
A faculty advisor, confirmed, present at meetings, and with read access to the repository where everything we publish is recorded — every change and every review, permanently. Nothing goes live without a review by a trained member first: the site carries the school's name, so that gate is a real process rather than a rubber stamp. The details are here, written for parents and staff.
Tell us about your club and we do the rest, including the writing if nobody in your leadership wants to. It costs nothing. Start here.
Nothing, for any track, all year. Every tool the club uses is free — the curriculum, the hosting, the code editor, the design software. There are no dues, no materials to buy, and no travel.
// Sign up
Type your answer, press Enter. Five questions, then you're on the list for the first meeting. You can also just turn up — signing up only means we can email you the date and the room.
Prefer a plain form? Open the interest form directly.
