Claudia Scharff

Claudia Scharff has served for 11 years as a teacher on special assignment for SFUSD, supporting all elementary school teachers in science. She was a Spanish bilingual science resource teacher and a third through fifth grade teacher at Alvarado for eight years. She co-lead a 4th and 5th grade girls science club with UCSF scientists and the support of the Science and Health Education Partnership (SEP) for three years and taught City Science to third grade teachers. Claudia was a coordinator at SEP for five years and particularly enjoyed working with teachers and scientists to address the needs of English Language Learners through science, as well as working with high school interns placed in UCSF science labs. She thinks that hands-on science and engineering investigations make the best springboard for developing language and math. There is no better way to get an otherwise shy child to talk, or an otherwise active child to focus, than to observe how a snail behaves when faced with an obstacle, or what happens when you squeeze lemons into red cabbage juice, or discover how to build a circuit with two lights! In her free time, Claudia likes to play in the water and the mountains, and with her two children.