Students of the Month – August 2018
Online:
Ethan (9th Grade) – Even though Ethan has been working hard as an older brother and taking care of two younger siblings, I admire his enthusiasm for participating in the Summer Program. At first, he was hesitant about reading books that were written before the year 2000, but the Summer Program has made him more open to reading different kinds of books, such as The Hobbit. Throughout the summer, we’ve had a lot of fun talking about the books we’ve read together. Ethan especially enjoyed making text-to-self connections and identified strongly with the character Wade Watts from the novel Ready Player One because of how Wade overcomes the challenges he experiences. After summer, I look forward to seeing Ethan continue to develop his love of reading and continue to make different types of connections when he reads! – Natalie Platon, Ethan’s Online Tutor
Region 1:
Communidad Cesar Chavez Students – Because we mainly group tutor at a short-term shelter, we only have the kids for a limited time before they move to more permanent housing. It’s tough to get tutoring done in a fairly noisy, fluid environment with kids of different abilities, but I’ve found multiplication flash cards are the most useful tool. 75% of the students we help have trouble with their times tables, and since multiplication is the cornerstone of math, the kids see immediate results. My favorite part of the year is during the summer, when we develop interactive science projects. They include projects such as dry ice, launching water bottles, anatomy, botany, paper airplanes, and making dinosaur fossils. The kids go nuts for this stuff!
– Evan Panas, Tutor
Region 10:
STEM of Wheels Students – We immensely enjoyed working with the students in STEM on Wheels. Their completed projects for our daily challenges were proud moments for both them and us. Whether it was building a bridge to cross a river or trying to program a Sprite to dance about the room, the kids demonstrated logic, background knowledge, reasoning, and most importantly, a sense of fun in completing their projects. We cheered as Daniella’s group’s little car inched its way up the inclined plane; we laughed with Bryan in his attempt to design his candy “cell” into a face; we groaned while doing our healthy exercises; we watched excitedly as Natalie’s dog chased a cat around the screen like she’d coded it to do. It was quite the summer program, full of amazing kids.
– STEM on Wheels Tutors