Local teen honored by Mayor Lily Mei and Fremont City Council for STEM Excellence
Friends of Children with Special Needs published an article about Aarav’s 8 weeks of tutoring Intro to Spanish course to 5 special needs children at the South Bay FCSN Center.
"Ugta Bharat" published an Article of Positive Impact and contributions made by Aarav Sharma in the Lives of Underprivileged Kids in India.
Throughout the past two years, Archbishop Mitty High School Sophomore Aarav Sharma taught a 12-week Scratch Language class and one-week Pre-Algebra summer camp for FCSN students. With the objective of helping special needs students gain confidence and motivation to pursue STEM in the future, both courses successfully provided an interactive and enlightening experience for its students.
Sophomore at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose has helped students with special needs, receiving positive feedback from the community. He started teaching the Scratch coding program to special needs children a year back. Since then, he has expanded his classes by teaching Pre-Algebra, coding in Python and Badminton camps to special needs children at Friends of Children with Special Needs (FCSN).
Non-Profit Organization for special needs children published an article of Aarav's contribution and Positive impact on Special needs children at FCSN(Friends of Children with Special Needs) with his skills and Passion:
International Non-Profit organization Lotus Petal Charitable Foundation published an article in July, 2022 highlighting Aarav's positive contribution and impact on the lives of Underprivileged kids in India.
Sharma is an experienced programmer who teaches online STEM courses through his own non-for-profit organization, TheCoderSquad. He also instructed a two-week badminton summer camp this summer at FCSN and donated therapy kits to the organization after completing a paid internship. To continue giving back to his community, Sharma created curriculums for the Pre-Algebra and Scratch language courses (from scratch) and opened the classes for FCSN students.
Developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) associates, Scratch is a visual programming language designed to introduce young children to coding. Sharma’s FCSN Scratch language class offered two six-week online classes, guiding students through the basics of the language. Having prior experience with Scratch, Sharma chose the language because of its interactive features and graphics.
To maintain the students’ interest, Sharma centered the class topics on simple game design and basic tools such as motion and control blocks. The students also particularly enjoyed Blooket, a modern classroom game in which Sharma hosted trivia-style quizzes to review knowledge covered in the lessons. During the coding process, the moving ScratchCat (computer-generated icon) also captured the students’ attention and improved their proficiency with the programming functions. “My favorite part is to see their growth and [happiness] while the Scratch cats [are] moving on their screens,” Sharma said.
While the Scratch course focused on in-class engagement, Sharma centered the Pre-Algebra camp with hands-on problem solving. Unlike the Scratch course, Sharma assigned daily homework for the students and provided in-depth explanations of the problems during class. “I [made sure] to assign homework and go over problems the next day,” Sharma said. “Parents really appreciated this [hands-on] concept.”
According to Sharma, the greatest challenge he faced while teaching the classes was accounting for age and skill differences. To address this issue, Sharma adjusted problem difficulties depending on each student’s knowledge level. By the end of the courses, students developed fundamentals and gained problem solving experience. More importantly, Sharma achieved his goal of helping the students gain confidence in pursuing STEM as special needs children. “STEM can make the future brighter. It provides special needs children the knowledge and independence to pursue their future goals,” Sharma said.
In the future, Sharma plans to continue teaching FCSN students STEM-related courses. “I have already worked with FCSN directors to post a new [online] Python class,” Sharma said. “It’s on the FCSN website, and we’ll be starting the course very soon.”