Tutoring by Sarah

Tutoring by Sarah - January 2017 Scholarship Essay

My whole life I have excelled at math and been in advanced classes. Currently as a senior, I am in Advanced Placement Calculus Year 2, and I received the highest score of 5 on my Advanced Placement Calculus Year 1 college test, giving me 5 college credits last May. I have always believed math is the most important school subject because we use math every day, even if we don't realize it. When I was a freshman and sophomore, I volunteered after school in the school library tutoring kids who needed help in math, in order to gain volunteer hours for Girls’ Honor and National Honor Society. I would be there twice a week, and I can’t even count how many students I helped. Helping students in my school in math was a way for me to give back to my school, since I wanted everyone else to be just as good as me in math. After I realized how good I was in tutoring math, I made flyers advertising my expertise, and gave them to all my past math teachers to hand out. I really needed the money to pay for gas for my car. Students took them home and four different families ended up hiring me to help their kids. Tutoring was the volunteer activity that inspired me to make a difference in my community and was my first paid job.

The first family to hire me needed me to help their son with his homework, during my junior year of high school. He was in middle school, at the time needed help in all of his subjects in school so I would sit with him for two hours, three times a week to make sure he understood what he was doing in school. After a school year of tutoring I helped bring his grades from D's to B's. He no longer needs my help.

Another family that hired me was for their daughter who was a freshman, also while I was a junior. I met with her twice a week for an hour each time to work on Geometry. Her grades went from C's to A's. I still work with her this year, my senior year, in Algebra 3-4 twice a week. She picks up concepts very quickly and currently has a B, but I know she can get it up to an A.

A mom of a girl my age hired me to help her daughter, during our junior year, in Pre­Calculus and Trigonometry. She went from an F in the class to a B. This year she is taking a statistics class at our school, which I have never taken, so I can’t help her anymore.

The last student who I currently tutor is my neighbor’s son, in Pre-Calculus. He recently switched schools, and his new school teaches math subjects in a different order so he is very behind and I am helping catch him up. His school does math every other day, so while he understands math, he just needs more time and help in it. He started this school year with a D, and I helped bring him up to a C, which is his current grade.

All of these students show how I gave back to my community by using my skills to help others. It's only four students I got paid to help, but in those four cases I made a huge difference in their lives by making sure they understood every concept of their classes. I can't even count how many other students I helped for free. I would love to continue to tutor in college because I love influencing students' learning and also because I do love school. Every time I finish a math problem successfully I smile because to me math is fun. I will always answer any questions of my classmates when they need help. Through college I will never stop helping people because it brings joy to me that I am intelligent and it also brings joy to other students allowing them to understand a topic much deeper. I know my tutoring has made a positive difference in my school and community because people know they can always come to me for help. I want to be perceived as the girl always willing to help in college as well.