When Motorola interns tell students math is cool, they believe it
Every Tuesday and Thursday morning over the summer, Motorola intern J.J. Darling traveled from the company's Schaumburg campus to Hoffman Estates High School.
The Northwestern University senior helped out in a sophomore level summer school class that covered the second semester of Algebra 1, led by teacher Dan Pfligler.
"The way he taught the class, it was pretty interactive, with a lot of math games and quick work sheets," says Darling, 21. "I'd walk around the room and field questions about the work sheets, or help students if they needed to catch up."
Most of the 20 students were enrolled in the class based on their placement exam scores so that they could boost their skills before taking the ACT test.
Darling was one of a dozen Motorola interns who tutored students this summer at Palatine Schaumburg High School District 211 high schools, including at Schaumburg, Palatine, Hoffman Estates, Conant and Fremd.
Mostly, they helped out in pre-algebra and algebra classes, tutoring students in small groups and if needed, one-on-one.
Another intern, Stephanie Lovitt of Palatine, returned to Fremd High School, where she had attended, to help out with a summer school algebra class.
"In high school I was always looking for an opportunity to tutor, but I never had the time because I was so busy," says Lovitt, 19, who returned last week to New York University. "I was pleased to be able to do it."
Darling is one of the last interns still working at Motorola, before he heads back to Northwestern next week. The electrical engineering major interned in the enterprise mobility unit of Motorola, helping to implement wireless networks for utility companies.
"I'm fairly good with math," Darling says. "It's the one thing I can understand and I think I can communicate it pretty well."
Pfligler says that just having another person in the classroom with a math background helped him teach the students. But he adds that Darling served as a role model as much as he did a tutor.
"They saw someone who actually liked to do math," Pfligler says.
In fact, Darling says that when students wrestled with a difficult math concept, and wondered aloud when they would ever need to use it, he could reply, "Well, actually ...' "
Seeing young adults working with math in fields of science and technology was part of the point, says Fred Ettinger. He heads up the intern program at Motorola, and engineered the partnership between the corporation and District 211.
"These interns have the passion for math," Ettinger says. "They can show students how to apply math and science to their future careers."
The outreach initiative was a pilot program, and part of Motorola's commitment to its STEM program, or Science, Technology, Engineering and Math education.
"With the STEM program, its primary focus is to spark some young people's interest," Ettinger says, "in science and engineering."
He expects to reprise the tutoring next summer with a new batch of interns, and possibly even send Motorola employees to the schools this year.