Purdue graduate, engineer and teacher inspires students to show up and be heard
Sharita Ware’s seventh graders at East Tipp Middle School near Lafayette spend their class time designing prosthetic legs for Barbie dolls. Her eighth graders are building and programming robots. After school, she coaches the First Lego League robotics team and supervises a decked-out maker space for students.
Ware’s colleagues have made her aware: What she offers her students is not normal.
Ware makes history daily, in large ways and small, as she innovates in the classroom and energizes the next generation of students, many of whom have infrequent encounters with minority women in leadership roles or in STEM. Ware’s unconventional approaches and a genuine love for her students helped solidify her selection as Indiana’s 2022 choice for Teacher of the Year.
Ware shuns the…