Earlier this year, the Library was very happy to learn that Verisk Analytics would continue supporting our Summer of Making programs during the pandemic. We also received funds from Con Edison to support two weeks of afternoon programming this summer as well. This year we faced a big challenge: how to offer these programs virtually.

The Library hired two Edge-ucators to run our virtual programs for teenagers. Carolina Melo grew up in White Plains and graduated from White Plains High School. She recently graduated from Parsons School of Design with an MFA. Michael Brand is a student at Iona College focusing his studies on cyber security. They put together a series of programs that focused on coding and crafts. Michael taught teens coding with Python and Java, and taught a video game design program. Carolina taught students about circuitry by adding an artistic element and showed students how to make a battery out of pennies. She also taught a workshop on stop motion animation, and showed teens how to build a tripod out of cardboard and toilet paper rolls. Her last program was on making pop-up cards. Teens learned paper engineering techniques and ended up with a small book showing all of these techniques.

Our Edge-ucators faced a very difficult challenge but rose to it. We had little experience in how to run these programs and what the difficulties would be, but Carolina and Michael did an amazing job preparing and teaching these workshops. The teens all enjoyed them and learned a lot.

We made an addition this summer, adding programs for elementary students in grades four to six. We held programs in the afternoons taught by teachers from Rye Arts Center and the STEM Alliance of Larchmont-Mamaroneck. During July, teachers from Rye Arts Center taught two programs a week in the afternoons. The programs they offered were: Storyboarding and Storytelling, Digital Drawing, Figure Sculptures, Bridge Building, and Sewing. In August, a teacher from the STEM Alliance taught two programs in August, the first was on STEM Superheroes, where students learned about people passed and present who have done some amazing things. The second week was about NASA and space exploration.

We would like to thank the White Plains Library Foundation, Verisk Analytics, and Con Edison for supporting these programs in a time of great uncertainty. All of the students who attended learned so much and had fun at the same time. Their support is greatly appreciated during this time of great uncertainty when we had very little experience offering programs like these virtually. We are so happy with how everything turned out.