Math enthusiasts Vindya Bhat, a doctoral student in math at Emory, and her husband Sridharan Raman, a financial analyst at Thompson Reuters, volunteer three hours every Saturday to run a unique program called the Grady Math Success Program. The program is designed to mentor sophomores in Math II for three years until they graduate.
After moving to Atlanta just three years ago, Bhat and Raman said they wanted to get more involved in the community. They signed up with the Grady Math Boosters Club, a math advocacy parent support group and became math tutors for the End of Course Test. When they realized the four-hour tutoring session was not enough time for them to make a difference with the students, the couple decided to start their own program. They sought support from the Grady Math Boosters Club and their Grady math teacher liaison, Linda Brasher.
The Math Success Program targets high-achieving students in subjects other than math, who are academically motivated enough to voluntarily participate in the program.
“The goal of the program is to get kids who struggle a little in math but who are basically pretty well-rounded students, and make it so that math isn’t what keeps them from succeeding in college or keeps them from choosing a career,” Brasher said.
The program works by building upon the students’ basic math skills. Bhat and Raman help students in reviewing and solidifying fundamental math skills, such as fractions. They believe math is a cumulative process and oftentimes, students lag behind on the most basic skills. By bolstering these elemental skills, Bhat and Raman help students better understand even higher-level math concepts.
One of the factors of the program that distinguish it from the typical tutoring and remediation programs offered at Grady, such as “Let’s Do It Again,” is that they use a problem-based learning style in their model that requires the students to employ investigative thinking into real-life applicable problems. This allows students to realize the relevance and importance of math in their future.
Instead of setting their own curriculum and standards, Bhat and Raman use the online program called Khan Academy, which offers an online repository of thousands of videos, quizzes and lessons for most subjects. The success program usually assigns students two “modules,” or lesson plans based on what they are learning, to complete per week. To make the program more engaging, Bhat and Raman look outside of the math problem itself. For instance, when learning about fractions, the students investigated the history of Egyptian fractions and even enjoyed an ethnic meal.
“I think that I have gotten better at thinking and doing the problems in my head,” said junior Zoie Cushing, who participated in the program last year. “I think I’ve gotten better at going faster. It’s worth getting up early on a Saturday morning to do math for three hours because it increases your grade in math class.”
Also, not only does the program provide basic math skills tutoring, but Bhat and Raman mentor students on college applications, the SAT, and their career paths. They even brought in an SAT tutor who offered them a discounted rate last year.
Just like with any educational pilot program, however, there were a few people who the program failed to reach. Junior Cate Matthews, who participated in the program last year, became frustrated throughout her experience. Although the program provided individualized learning, Matthews said she did not like spending so much time on the computerized math modules. She said the website was not suited to her learning style and the Saturday sessions were not personal enough.
“Their big thing in making us do the modules was to makes us like math. But all the modules were doing was making me hate math,” Matthews said.
Changes to the program this year include a new batch of tenth graders with whom they hope to stay until their senior year and the potential for expanding the program to other local high schools. Raman and Bhat are also in the process of gaining 501(c)(3) status as a non-profit organization in the hopes that they can attract local organizations’ attention for funding and scholarships. In fact, at the end of last year, they were able to provide the dedicated and hardworking students with small prizes such as pizza coupons and larger prizes such as $100 to $200. More than anything, Bhat and Raman are hoping to expand their program and get up to 30 to 40 students involved this year. They are also in need of parent and teacher volunteers to help with generating interest in the program.
Despite being described by students as “amazingly dedicated,” “patient and understanding,” and having a “contagious” love of math, Bhat and Raman give all the credit for the program’s success to the students.
“We are working with a bright group of students who have a lot of potential, and we are excited to see them grow,” Raman said. “We set pretty high standards for our students to remain with the program because the program is a privilege for these students and they seem to have met these standards.”
Admission to the course is based upon evaluation of an application, transcript, interview, and diagnostic test. Students can submit applications to Brasher by October 1. Those who are interested in volunteering, can email [email protected] for more information.
