Week 6

Assignments

• [ ] Task 1: Interactive story/song

Process

I took the beginner route on this one, finding challenge in making the different interactable elements react to one another in the scratch environment. I had actually never used scratch directly, so while most of the blocks made logical sense, I found myself less adept than expected, and humbled by the experience.

I composed a brief story where an elephant enters a jungle scene, says hello, and when clicked, suggests that the audience might think he was a trumpet player. There is a brief pause, where the scene shifts to a night city, and a saxophone appears. Our elephant plays a melody on it and says, I am more of a saxophone player.

Reflection

In similar fashion, diversity can challenge the preconceptions we might have about the learners who enter our spaces, and not accounting for such can mean that folks leave the space without the skills they’d hoped to gain by entering, despite our best intentions. I have a particularly notable memory of missing on diversity recognition, in an art class where I presented a “Christmas tree ornament” making project with a group that contained a few folks whose families didn’t observe Christmas. It started a little awkwardly, but the students were surprisingly ready to adapt, pivoting their decorative piece into one that celebrated the season with their own flair, easily fitting the terms I had laid out about the project deliverable. It was a great opportunity for the students and me, because the students who celebrated Hanukkah were excited to talk about their traditions, and found an audience who was as eager to learn more about them.

I have since pivoted that activity to be agnostic of specific holiday traditions, so that it can be approached from any celebratory perspective equally. I have also set up the somewhat small space of the laser cutting room so that anyone who might struggle to feel comfortable in the space can see a live view from inside the machine, as it is loaded and run for each job. Learning disabilities are a relatively routine consideration around code, where much of the practice is in typing explicit lines which must be syntactically consistent to work. Upper school classes have typically relied on that typing practice, but exceptions are occasionally made where it makes more sense to focus on the logic than order of the letters. I know there will be no shortage of learning opportunities toward meeting students from diverse backgrounds, and doing so with those unique contexts in mind. But I do not feel like there is any lack of support from my school, with regards to making those adjustments as needed.

Tools

• Scratch