The BranchOut! Blog

7/5/18 - The penultimate day of Week 2 JLCC BranchOut! The day began with a procession of mentors giving fist bumps to the students. As the week progressed, I noticed that the students became more and more excited walking into the classroom as they were greeted by familiar faces. As with all the activities this week, the math warm-up was a step up from the previous day: what is the probability of getting exactly 2 heads if you drop 3 coins? Through this problem, the student

Today was our second day mentoring at JFK's summer school, so things were beginning to settle down a bit as both the students and teachers began to really adjust to the pace of the work schedule. For my pre-calculus class, since there is a big unit test coming up on Thursday, the students were given a long review packet and encouraged to work together and seek help from me (the tutor) and the teacher. Because this is somewhat of a condensed course, there were some problems th

Happy First Day of BranchOut! 2018! Day one started out with a bang at the Montgomery County Public School and James Lee Community Center! Here you can see our mentors gearing up to meet their first round of students! Students began day one by tackling the topic of problem solving, using Legos and K'nex to build different structures. Mentors guided each age range to success with a different perspective, goal and strategy. A great start to the summer! #branchout2018

This past Saturday, members of the BranchOut program gathered at Pender Professional Center in Fairfax, VA for a training session. BranchOut is a multicultural STEM education program that was created by Dr. Yushien Wu in order to help spread cultural awareness and to foster interest in STEM related topics. During the session, educators and executives taught the mentors how to succeed in educating and creating relationships with their mentees. Nitu Mohan from Madison High Sch

Last year, I participated in the Branchout program. I was able to meet people from unique cultural backgrounds and students with different learning needs. During my experience, I built strong relationships with my mentees. One of these mentees was a 21 year old student who had recently moved to America from Afganistan. Despite his social status, he was brilliant, constantly trying to learn how to read English and develop his linguistics. One day, we had a conversation about w