About KTK Academy

Kids Teaching Kids Academy is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit run by students, with adult officers handling finances and logistics. It exists so that every kid in Riviera Beach and West Palm Beach has a computer before high school.

Support KTK See the camp

From Heath

I got into building computers because my brother was doing it. The summer after a robotics camp I built a few at home, and my dad said, why don't you turn this into something.

A lot of kids don't have their own computer. I figured I should probably help some of them. So the first summer, six kids came to an office downtown for three afternoons and built one each. The next summer it was twenty kids at my school, with five of us teaching. This summer it's fifty computers.

The part I care about most is that kids teach it. A 7th grader explaining the RAM to a 6th grader is different from an adult doing it, and it works.

Heath Neer, founder

Adult supervisors are in the room at every session. They watch, and they step in only if safety calls for it. The teaching, from the first screw to the first boot, is done by students.

Heath at the camp director's desk with a KTK banner and a sign reading Youth Camp Director — The camp director's desk at last summer's camp.

A room of campers seated in blue chairs, listening to teachers at the front — Teachers presenting at the front of the room.

How the camp is run

The name is the method. Every rule below exists to make a kid-run camp fair, safe and the same for every camper.

Teachers are 7th graders

Each has built a PC before and can say what every part does. They train for a week before camp, build their own computer in that week, and keep it. Administrators are students too, with stricter must-haves.

Everyone builds the same computer

Same parts, same order, same screen at the front. Tables move together, nobody's build is worse than the next table's, and part donations have to be sets of identical items for the same reason.

If a part breaks, the teacher covers it

A camper who breaks a part by accident gets their teacher's. The warranty replacement goes to the teacher after camp. The camper finishes on time and nobody argues about blame.

Adults handle the business side

Finances, purchasing, the host school, transport and lunch are handled by the nonprofit's adult officers, and adults supervise every session. The teaching is not.

An empty room with rows of blue chairs and a wall of stacked computer case boxes before camp starts — The room before campers arrive, with a case for every camper.

Leadership

The students who run KTK, and this summer's teachers.

A teacher in a KTK cap talking with campers at a table of parts — A build table at The Weiss School in Palm Beach Gardens.

The kids we serve

Campers come from Riviera Beach, West Palm Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. Priority goes to kids who don't have a computer of their own at home, in the grades where homework starts needing one.

The goal is simple to say and will take years: every kid in Riviera Beach and West Palm Beach with a computer before high school.

Help build the next fifty What the news said

Where camp happens

A school sends campers and lends the room. The Weiss School in Palm Beach Gardens hosted the second summer. Summer 2027 runs at H. L. Watkins Middle School in Palm Beach Gardens, in the media center.