By Brian W. Carter for Los Angeles Sentinel
Originally published April 22, 2026
The Sentinel was recently invited to Inglewood High School “United’s” (IHSU) 2nd Annual GAME JAM 2026.
“It’s part animation, it’s coding, it’s art and technology integration,” said Aba Ngissah, career technical education advisor (CTE) and Early College Lead for the Inglewood School District.
GAME JAM is a game development program in collaboration with game developing studio, Cleverlike Studios, Inc. and the Bric Foundation. It’s a three-day intensive where students come and learn from instructors from the industry how to design games using the Epic Games/Fortnite platform.
“This is for students who are interested,” said Ngissah. “The students can be designers, already have started, gotten some kind of skills in game designing or have done absolutely nothing.”
Miranda Holt is a special education teacher and a media content advisor at IHSU. She shared why programs like GAME JAM are so important.
“I do believe that it is a great career path,” said Holt about Game Jam. “Mostly we say, we want your child to be a doctor or a lawyer, but in the new age, 2026, we have these content creators.”
Holt continued, “If our students are already playing these games, then allowing that other component of using their imagination to actually start creating the games as well — and make some money off it.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to show them what else is out there.”
Constance Allen is a CTE teacher, who teaches animation and graphic design at IHSU. She worked in the animation industry in color design, technical directing and as an ink and painter for over 30 years. Allen has worked on films such as “Space Jam” (1996) and “The Iron Giant” (1999). She spoke to the Sentinel about working with students during GAME JAM.
“It’s just been working with them, building their games,” said Allen, who shared the change she saw working closely with one of the special needs students during the program.
“I have seen him blossom while working on this,” said Allen, “in fact, once he realized that he had a complete game and everyone was coming over and playing his game, he’s now opened up.
“I mean in seconds, it’s just transformed him in the most amazing way.
“They have all created fabulous stuff.”
Brian Dickman is founder and CEO of Cleverlike Studios, Inc., responsible for creating and publishing games inside Minecraft, Fortnite and more. He has been working with the youth utilizing the Unreal Editor for Fortnite at GAME JAM 2026.
“The great thing about what we’re doing here is we’re tapping into students interests and familiarity with Fortnite and we’re connecting it to the Unreal Engine, which is a software tool that’s used in the industry.
“This is our way of taking student interests and motivation in video games and connecting it to career skills by engaging them in these opportunities.”
Dickman shared that they do events like this all over the country at high schools and colleges. GAME JAM at IHSU is their sixth event and Dickman shared that the talent always comes to these kind of events.
“One of the things that’s great about it is how capable the students are when you put them in their comfort zone,” said Dickman. “We have, pretty much, success with every student at different levels where they’re able to sit down, work amongst their peers and come up with their own creations.”
At the end of GAME JAM 2026, students play and test their peers work and awards are presented for character creation, environment and other aspects of the games they created.
“What’s really great is that it’s open to all of our students whether you are a general ed student, gifted, English learner, special education — everybody is on here,” said Ngissah.
She informed me that the program is for students eighth through 12th grade, but apparently the elementary kids want in too.
“Some of the parents brought their children in and we have somebody as young at fourth grade in here,” said Ngissah.
“We’re not going to turn them away as long as they want to do it and they’re creating amazing things.”
Shemika Pitts is one of the assistant principals at IHSU. She spoke about some of the games the students have created and how GAME JAM is a gateway to a great career.
“We’re really excited to see our students using their animation skills that they have been learning and to put it to work in creating these amazing games that they’re creating,” said Pitts.
“One of our students incorporated math into his video game, you have to answer math questions to move to the next level.”
Pitts shared what’s next for the students as they continue to develop their game-building skills.
“We also had the musician’s union come out to talk to them about careers and the opportunities for music playing a role in video games,” said Pitts. “The next step will be our kids are going to work with our music CTE teachers to do voiceover and add music to their video games as well.”
