Melissa Wrenchey is an educator in the Lake Washington School District in Washington.
Melissa began her teaching career as a language arts teacher, then later began teaching media, game design, web development, and programming. She taught AP computer science principles for two years before landing what she calls the best job in the world: teaching maker education with social entrepreneurship, in which she and students look at ways to learn, solve problems, and improve others’ lives. Additionally, Melissa is pursuing a doctorate at Northeastern University. In her action research program, she is looking at how to replicate her school’s STEM outreach mentoring program. Melissa believes that teachers can learn the way they teach and enjoys leading engaging hands-on teacher professional development workshops.
“Students are building Arduino cities. They used their tools of choice: drawing in OneNote, Minecraft, by hand. It’s not important what tool they choose as long as they go through the ideation process.”
“Teachers can be agents of change in local and national communities by bringing real problems into the classroom and having students get an opportunity to think about ways to solve the problems, collaborate together, and really see an impact in these issues locally and nationally.”
“Reach out to me if you are interested in Experiential Learning, Project Invent , and ideas to bring authentic problem solving to your classes.”
Learn more about HP Teaching Fellows.
Reinvent the Classroom