Kids get special Stem help
Lowell » In an effort to expand the educational opportunities of younger students, Umass Lowell alumni and students have taken time to provide lessons through virtual sessions.
Multiple students and graduates of Umass Lowell have been working with Lowell elementary school students as tutors, mentors and classroom support for lessons in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. This comes from the Pedroso Tutors Program, funded by Accutronics Inc. President and Co-founder Luis Pedroso, which employs undergraduate education majors and STEM majors with an education minor through the university’s Uteach program. Started in January 2020, Pedroso’s program features about 10 university students each semester being paid $15 an hour.
“When I went home, I didn’t have anybody to help me with anything. I was on my own,” Pedroso said in a statement. “Math is really a foreign language, and unless you understand it, you’re not going to be able to do very well.”
The program was shut down last March due to the coronavirus pandemic, but was restarted in November by having the Umass Lowell students participating virtually at the Rogers School’s STEM Academy. One of those students in the program is Payal Patel, a senior honors biology major who works with kids in third and fourth grade. Patel logs into a Zoom breakout room with a small group of students who are struggling with a particular lesson and break it down for them, step by step.
“Working with the students really does brighten my mood,” Patel said in a statement. “They’re hilarious. It just makes my day. You can plan a lesson second by second, but when you walk into a classroom or go on Zoom, everything can go wrong and you have to make a whole new lesson on the spot.”
There’s also Giana Vozella, a junior education major who taught twice a week in-person at Pawtucketville Memorial Elementary School when the program first started last year. Vozella helped kindergarten students with writing for half an hour each day, while the rest of the day was spent working on math in small groups with students in first, second and fourth grade.
“I got to work with so many different students and grade levels and learning levels, and with students from so many different cultural backgrounds,” Vozella said in a statement. “It empowered them, they actually begged me to give them homework every night.”