Beginning Coding on Scratch

Seasoned educator from the Avenues New York campus. With almost a decade of experience teaching elementary-aged students in both domestic and international settings, she brings global and solution-oriented lenses to her practice as a teacher and mentor. She prioritizes positive and enthusiastic student-centered learning experiences when fostering understandings and building relationships. Most recently, Laura collaborated with Learning Experience Designers to cultivate service-based learning partnerships with local animal shelters, where students used design-thinking practices to prototype, construct, test, and finalize original dog and cat toys to donate to the shelter. Similarly, other students served the ARF organization by researching and implementing advertising campaigns with Scratch! coding platform to aid the most vulnerable shelter animals. The experience was highly engaging and an organic application of modern day best-practice teaching strategies for twenty-first century skills.