From graduating from Andhra University in India with a bachelor’s in Computer Science to honing her programming skills at Hewlett Packard (HP) and various start-up companies in back-end development for 27 years, new Introduction to Computer Science teacher Lalitha Maruvada has a wealth of experience and knowledge to convey to the freshmen in her classes.
In the first few weeks of school, Maruvada has received a warm welcome from her students in her one class: first period Intro to CS. Science teacher Thomas Casavant is teaching a 6th period version of the same class. Meanwhile, Sara Tseng, who taught the class for many years before, is now solely teaching Chinese this year at both Saratoga and Los Gatos.
From 2022-23, Maruvada also volunteered with Microsoft’s philanthropy program Technology Education and Learning Support (TEALS), serving as a teacher’s assistant for the AP Computer Science program at Prospect High in 2023.
Maruvada said she left the industry for two reasons: her love of teaching and desire to inspire youth to go into computer science.
“Sometimes, my kid’s friends would say they don’t want to go into computer science. They have preconceived notions thinking that there’s no creativity in software development,” Maruvada said. “When I volunteered [with TEALS], I wanted to take those barriers away.”
Maruvada said she has always enjoyed the experience of interacting with students in a classroom. During the pandemic, Maruvada spent many days home alone in her room, working on software projects. In the process, she came to reflect upon the direction of her life, and decided that it was time for something new. She ultimately decided to transition to teaching and went on to obtain a master’s degree in education from San Jose State.
Since this is her first year as a full-time teacher, Maruvada has put extra effort towards getting acclimated to her greater responsibilities, entailing controlling pacing of classes and coming up with projects, for example. So far, she has been broadly following the curriculum that was used by Tseng.
“The other teachers at Saratoga High — Ms. Warmuth, Mr. Welander, Mr. Wang — all of them have been so phenomenal and supportive,” Maruvada said.
Maruvada aims to make the class as creative and open-ended as possible, aiming to instill problem-solving skills in her students, as well as give them the opportunity to apply these skills in ways that best suit their individual approaches.
Maruvada also wishes to foster a healthy learning environment in which students can interact and learn from each other. She finds that learning from peers is a skill that scales across industries, and hopes to impart that same mentality with her students.
“Teaching is giving help the right way. Giving answers is not the way to help,” Maruvada said. “First, you have to think about what your peer wants to do, and then give them suggestions on where they can try to go.”
