Construct 3 Teacher Advisors

Julie York is a Media & Computer Science elective teacher and Career Preparation department chair at South Portland High School in South Portland, Maine.

She concurrently works with Southern Maine Community College to offer dual enrollment courses at the high school for interested students. Passionate about making and creating, Julie has been working with students since 2002 teaching video productions, animation, game design, graphic design, business, seminar, advanced technology, web design, media literacy and more.

Julie participates in several professional organizations including: founder and member of Maine CSTA, a Common Sense certified educator, an Amazon Teacher Innovator, a Pathfinders ECS, and a NCWIT Aspirations in Computing Educator. Outside of teaching, she founded and owns two geek community oriented businesses, Weekend Anime & Games and PortConMaine, and has two adorable young children.

I am relatively new in education, I left the corporate world about 7 years ago. I held several positions in Information Technology, before deciding to make a mid-life career change. My first 2 years I taught elementary K-5, before transitioning to Middle School (my happy place.) This is my 5th year teaching middle school Introduction to Programming.

Programming not only provides students with real world skills but also encourages students to develop soft skills needed for life after high school, like collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.

As Digital Schoolhouse's Curriculum Content Developer, Estelle is responsible for the creation and curation of their innovative teaching resources. With a catalogue of workshops that include everything from lessons on algorithms using Ubisoft's Just Dance to investigating binary numbers with Nintendo's Super Mario Maker 2, Digital Schoolhouse is at the forefront of playful computing.

With over 15 years teaching experience and a Masters in Teaching and Learning, Estelle is an enthusiastic practitioner who has the expertise to take difficult Computer Science concepts and present them in a new and innovative way. She is always ready to come up with something new and exciting and is currently designing resources for incorporating animation techniques into the teaching of programming.

I’m Sydnie, I’m a middle school CTE teacher, and I love video games. I'm currently playing Sims 4, but I usually play MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or sand-box games. Prior to teaching, I was a Nuclear Electrician in the Navy before I went to University of Houston for my undergrad. I recently finished my master’s at Sam Houston State University in Instructional System Design and Technology.

I’m finishing my 8th year of teaching, and I’ve taught middle school Intro to Programming for 7 of those. The only programming experience I had prior was in high school, but I’ve started learning how to code, specifically Construct 3 and JavaScript. I love teaching critical thinking skills and problem solving, and I enjoy encouraging students not to be too quick to give up even though the project they were working on still has bugs a week later. I think anyone can code, and programming provides a supportive environment for all students from peer to peer feedback to possibly students teaching you something new.