Get to know Yana, B4M Executive Director

What is your favorite part about working with the students and interacting with the Buddies4Math community? 

My favorite part about working with the students is getting to know them and watching them grow as they advance through math topics as well as get more comfortable in our sessions. Coming in every Friday to be greeted by the students with their warm energy and their excitement about our sessions is something amazing to experience and facilitates the creation of friendships with the students. With every session, they break out of their shell show a bit more of their selves, and share about what is going on in their life. By coming in every Friday, we both recognize each other and feel connected. Also, not only do they open up, but they share an excitement to play the games and progress in their math skills which is great to see. The happiness and joy they have in their achievements in skill progression and reframing learning as fun always makes me feel very proud! 

The Buddies4Math community is not only about the connections you build with the students but also with fellow tutors. I have met amazing peer tutors who I have also gotten to know. Sharing our experiences and what we have learned has helped me grow as a tutor and leader. There is a lot of support and insight that the tutors share and I always look forward to getting to meet or reconnect with tutors and friendships across multiple schools I have made because of Buddies4Math. 

Tell us your favorite story from working with the students this year.

My favorite story from working with students this past year was the first Friday of our Fall tutoring sessions. I was at Therakauf Elementary and when I and the other tutors split off into groups to play an outdoor module, a group of girls rushed up to me, excitedly exclaiming how they had remembered me, from the previous spring. I remembered all of them too and they wanted to tell me everything they had done over the summer. While we continued playing the outdoor module game with a math beach ball catch game, in our small group, some other students started to goof off. Two of the girls who had approached me quickly intervened telling the other students to pay attention and participate because the game was really fun and that they were missing out by not fully engaging. Hearing the girls’ eagerness to play the game and also fully apply themselves and their peers was great and demonstrated the excitement that accompanies Buddies4Math for the students. When we split into small groups to play math games, the girls were so excited to show off what math they had learned and they told me about how they wanted me to give them harder math problems and challenge themselves. Amidst their desire to learn more and challenge themselves, they also shared about how their time in school was going and they had a lot of questions about high school and college as well.

What future projects are in the works for Buddies4Math and the STEM module? 

With all the work and modules that our summer volunteers put into content creation, we are in the process of planning the implementation of the diverse learning materials into our weekly sessions. We plan to run the modules of art, cooking, STEM, and our card games in upcoming Friday sessions and host a family math night at each site. In the family math night, we want to invite students’ families to come to our evening sessions and participate in the games and modules with the students. 

For the STEM module, our team has worked on polishing and adding the final artistic touches to the instruction sheets. We are looking into publishing our sheets and STEM curriculum we planned to be accessible to teachers, educators, parents, or anyone who wants to do engaging, fun science experiments. Each of the sheets now has more cohesive elements so we can publish them as a group set to cover all different STEM curricula. For our other summer modules, we are not only implementing them into our Buddies4Math session but we are making them accessible to more people too. For example, our card game group is drawing up their original cards to be played with the students and then we plan to digitally publish them for print. 

What have you learned about being a leader from Buddies4Math?

Being a leader at Buddies4Math has allowed me to break out of my comfort zone, open up, and find my voice in my community. I originally began Buddies4Math being timid, but through my leadership, I have learned to advocate for my ideas and thoughts and create new connections. I have gained skills in management and organization, starting with site management at Monta Loma and now moving up to supporting leads to manage each of the 4 sites.I have also learned how to plan and view curriculum building differently by talking with the students and faculty to understand the needs and wants of the students and learning. I have also learned the power of building community and interpersonal relationships through this experience. My goal at Buddies4Math is to foster the learning, enjoyment, and growth of all participants in our community.