In my experience, coding is not interesting to teenagers, generally. But making games is, as is 3D printing, and robotics. So, don't teach 'programming', teach

In my experience, coding is not interesting to teenagers, generally. But making games is, as is 3D printing, and robotics. So, don't teach 'programming', teach game development, CAD, robotics etc. Start with blocks / agent (turtle) based languages. Jump right in to doing fun things! Things like turtlestitch (Logo for sewing machines) turtlespaces (3D logo with STL export for 3D printing) cospaces (block-based 3D games) etc. Starting with Python is always going to be a slog. Leave it for later