In conversation with Xcarett Sánchez Peiro: Lifetime Learning as a Learner and Educator
By Melodie D
Educators are often young people’s first entry-point to Scratch and coding, and they play an essential role in shaping perceptions around these digital tools and opportunities. At Scratch, we hope that these entry points are playful and centered around the passions of young people.
In Scratch founder Mitch Resnick’s book Lifelong Kindergarten, he discusses the “teaching” of creativity: “All children are born with the capacity to be creative, but their creativity won’t necessarily develop on its own. It needs to be nurtured, encouraged, supported.” Educators in our community play a critical role in this work of nurturing, encouraging, and supporting. Educators themselves can also model and engage in this lifelong work of creative learning.
Xcarett Sánchez Peiro is the Creative Director at El Garage Hub, a makerspace in Mexicali, Mexico. As an industrial designer turned educator, she enjoys working with colleagues who all have “different profiles and different passions’’ to nurture the creativity of the next generation of creative coders. Xcarett’s work with both young people and educators in Mexicali is inspired by her own lifetime-love of learning. She shared how she models the spirit of “nurturing, encouraging, and supporting” as a learner and educator to encourage others to continue learning with code and empower them to explore their passions.
Can you describe your first experience learning with Scratch?
When I was in my first year of teaching, I was part of a learning experience with Support Hero. The first two or three days of the class, the teacher taught us how to use Scratch to create characters and a snake video game.
At the end of the experience, they gave the kids a legend from an indigenous culture from a region called Yumanos, Kiliwas, and Cucapah. The kids were challenged to combine the snake game and indigenous culture. The characters, art, background of the project had to be inspired by the legend from the indigenous culture.
This was my first experience with Scratch. There were a lot of things to do. You can do everything. Personally, I had thought that coding was like in the movies: a black screen with green letters and meaningless numbers. When I started doing coding I felt super intelligent — like I was the most intelligent person. And I try to pass this feeling onto the kids.
Imagine if you are eight years old or you are seven years old and you are coding a video game, imagine what you can do when you are older or when you grow up. I try to create a learning experience in which the kids can use their hearts and their brains.
In your opinion, what is the value of learning how to code?
We have a school maker-faire every six months and we invite the kids to participate. For one of these maker faires, we were teaching the kids about the Sustainable Development Goals. My kids decided to make anti-bullying glasses. They used Makey Makey and Scratch to make glasses that identified and blocked bullying and sensitive comments. So we needed to make the code for the glasses and words.
When the kids focus on other things, like solving a problem, it becomes more important than the coding itself, because they are using platforms and technology as a tool to solve problems.
How has teaching others how to code shaped you and your work as an educator?
I taught a kid who was super energetic; it was hard for him to focus. I remembered starting out by asking him, “Do you like coding? Yes or no? And if you like coding, what do you want to do?”
When I started to ask the kids what they wanted to learn, they really embraced the coding and the curriculum. They felt like they were in charge. I was the facilitator and they — the children — were in charge of their knowledge. This was my “aha moment”: I started to think from another perspective.
How has teaching others to code encouraged you on your lifelong learning journey?
I started to teach with the Scratch cards and my kids used to tell me, “I want more. I want another video game that is more difficult,” and that keeps me learning. With the resources that are in Scratch and YouTube and other blogs, I have the opportunity to understand more complex video games and teach them to the kids.
During the pandemic, we taught kids through online classes. We were trying to make a “What type of student are you?” Scratch project. We started from scratch, brainstorming project backgrounds and characters. During this process, I was trying to learn everything about coding and how to teach them. I’d say, “Okay, we can do this, we can do this,” but on my other computer, I was also having to search how to do it.
After all the kids presented their project, the class finished super well. I think this was my favorite class because I had to learn to teach the kids, while also having to learn, in a very fast way.
What do you see as the greatest value in empowering other educators to teach with code?
Here in Mexico, teaching is very traditional, so it’s very difficult to implement technology in the classroom. Before the pandemic it was really difficult to try to invite teachers and start PDs. I think the challenge was that our team was very young and the teachers looked at us and said, “What are you going to teach me? You are a kid.”
But after the pandemic, all the teachers had to learn — it was mandatory — to use computers and technology. We used this opportunity to teach them, to support them in basic computer and webcam skills, and teaching online classes. After the pandemic, the perspective of the teachers changed a lot. They started to trust in us. And we used this trust to tell them, “I’m not going to teach you how to teach, you have a lot of experience, but I will show you new ways to include technology and include a new perspective because every generation changes.” We try to tell them that these technologies are a new way to create a new learning experience that will also help them in their work.
When you teach teachers how to implement STEM, you can impact more and more kids.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interested in meeting more educators from around the world? Sign up for the 2023 Scratch Conference to connect with global organizations and Scratch educators, here: https://www.scratchfoundation.org/scratch-conference
