I’ve always been involved with pro bono projects in the past, but recently I wanted the opportunity to do something more related to my university studies, and also where I could see the impact directly. That’s why, since last September, I decided to become one of The Access Project volunteer tutors.
The Access Project works with high potential students from disadvantaged background providing in-school support and personalised tuition to help them gain access to top universities. Young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are 6 times less likely to attend a top university compared to their more affluent peers.
The Access Project helps students to understand the pathway to university, and understands that without the grades students are unable to progress to these selective institutions. Each student enrolled on The Access Project is tutored in a subject of their choice; this academic focus means that, on average, students on The Access Project make 9 months more progress than their peers.
For a student, to be able to sit down with a subject expert for an hour every week and work through topics at their own pace is invaluable to their learning, but this has been an amazing experience for me as well. Volunteering as a tutor means you’re using your skills and knowledge to help someone else, and this exchange and learning process is really fulfilling.
Every Monday, my student Tolu travels to the Lever building to receive help in her maths subjects. It’s not always easy to find the willing to tutor a student at the end of a working day, but I enjoy every minute of it. Tolu is brilliant and I really enjoy spending time with her doing linear regression, normal distribution, trigonometric functions, geometric series and curve sketching exercises. Reviewing these topics with her every week is not only fun, but also beneficial to my daily job as Digital Analyst in Tesco.
I really feel I’ve improved in being able to explain complex concepts in simple terms and, in opposition to when I was teaching Applied Maths at the university to a big class, where I had to strictly follow the agenda for the day; this time I improved in flexibility and ability to adapt quickly to the current situation and needs.
I really think that motivated students should be able to achieve places at elite universities if they want to, and I will do my best to support Tolu achieving
Source: tap orig