Team:CCA SanDiego/HumanPractice
Human Practices
OutreachOutreach
Twice every week, CCA iGEM students went to a nearby elementary school, Solana Ranch, to tutor students. The tutoring was available to all students at the school, so we worked with kids in grades ranging from kindergarten to the sixth grade. This posed a unique challenge for us, as we had to adapt with each individual student's grade and skill level. Through it all, we focused on the children's learning needs, helping them achieve their educational goals while also emphasizing the importance of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects. For us, it was incredible to think that we could have inspired a future scientist.
Though we put an emphasis on STEM subjects, we were there to promote the general importance of learning. We particularly stressed the importance of understanding the concepts that were being covered in the kids’ homework assignments, not just quickly finishing the assignment as fast as possible. This encouraged the kids to realize and appreciate the importance of putting effort into a project to understand it, rather than getting the correct answer while not knowing how they got to that result. This was a challenge sometimes; explaining the fundamentals of fractions to a child who had never heard of the word “denominator” before forced us to be particularly conscious as to how to present our tutoring advice.