Do you have any questions? by Ria

Do you have any questions? by Ria - April 2026 Scholarship Essay

“Do you have any questions?”

It’s a simple question—one I’ve asked countless times as a tutor at Mission Math, my virtual tutoring nonprofit. But the response, or lack of one, has proven otherwise.

Take Rose, a professional tennis player-in-training I’ve taught for years. One geometry session, she confused perimeter for area, then forgot the difference between scalene and isosceles triangles. When I asked if she had questions, she shook her head sheepishly.

Group sessions felt worse. Once, my Algebra 1 class sat silently the full hour. And of course, when I asked for questions, all I got were thumbs-down emojis.

Their silence lingered with me, a feeling I knew all too well. For months in eighth-grade math, I stayed silent, a knot rising in my throat every time I wanted to speak up. I pretended to understand everything, but froze on assignments as my dread quietly grew. Sensing that my students felt the same, I set out to master the skill of building classrooms where questions felt safe.

Turning to my sister for advice, she recommended a book from her philosophy seminar: Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As I read, I began connecting Freire’s critique of traditional education—where students are empty vessels memorizing facts from all-knowing teachers—to my tutoring. Feeding my students formulas built a wall between us, making me the authority and them compliant, not curious. Freire’s vision of a “liberatory” education—where teachers and students learn together in dialogue—captivated me.

To experiment, I started with Rose, writing geometry problems about her expertise: tennis. Yet, when she stared at one problem, her puzzled expression made me sweat. Had I forced the connection?

Suddenly, she broke into hysterical laughter. “This situation is impossible in real tennis!” she managed between laughs. She stood up to demonstrate the arc of a serve while my unathletic self tried to keep up. As I rewrote my question, she eagerly posed her own: “I can predict where a ball lands based on my serve angle?!” Naturally, our roles blurred: she was learning as much as I was.

While Freire’s ideas began to click in one-on-one sessions, my group classes were at a standstill. Needing more perspectives, I reflected on the mentor who helped me overcome my anxiety: my eighth-grade math teacher, Mr. Blum.

I recalled an activity from his class: he split us into groups, handed us triangles, and prompted us to find patterns. His ambiguity initially stirred my anxiety, but as my partners and I exchanged guesses and sketched ideas, I grew so absorbed that I forgot to be afraid. By the end, we proudly discovered the Pythagorean Theorem.

I now get why Mr. Blum’s activity worked: because everyone was sharing questions, mine felt like part of a collective effort, not an interruption.

I mirrored his approach in my quiet Algebra 1 class. To teach factoring, I gave students expanded polynomials and their factored forms, challenging them to reverse-engineer a procedure. Most of them stared at me, as if I’d asked the impossible. Eventually, the silence broke as their questions and answers collided midair: “What’s a trinomial?!” “It’s a sum of three terms, but are negative expressions factored differently?” By the end of class, they’d taught themselves to factor, and nearly everyone aced my unit test.

When I founded Mission Math, teaching appeared obvious: students ask questions; I provide answers. But I overlooked how vulnerable admitting uncertainty feels, a fear I once knew as the classmate afraid of slowing everyone down.

As I continue teaching over the next few years, I hope to master the skill of slowing my classes down by embracing confusion and inviting my students to teach me, drawing from Freire. Inspired by my favorite teachers, I also aim to design activities that push students outside their comfort zones so they have to speak up, even if it’s to say they’re confused. As I’ve expanded Mission Math to 4,000+ students, one thing has remained constant in every classroom I lead: questioning the unknown is our shared responsibility, not a burden.