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While he
never experienced it himself, Snehal
Patel had heard the story many times
of young people diverted from an
otherwise bright academic future by one
of life’s most common educational
stumbling blocks: math aversion.
So the
26-year-old son of immigrant parents
gave up a comfortable job as a Motorola
software engineer to join a worldwide
movement which helps young people
conquer that most troublesome of
learning pitfalls.
His work,
it seems, has produced more than better
math students. It has changed lives.
“Once
young people conquer their fear of math,
once they accomplish that, it’s a
success that flows into other parts of
their lives,” said Patel. “It affects
how they interact with the rest of the
world.”
In less
than two years after launching the local
branch of an educational consortium
known as Mathnasium, Patel has seen its
innovative curriculum achieve exactly
the results he describes.
“Imagine
sitting in a math class every day and
not understanding what the teacher was
saying,” he says.
“You don’t
feel good about yourself, you’re
frustrated, you have a sense of
helplessness.” In short, “You hate it.”
However,
Patel notes, “When one of these students
sees math in a way that makes sense,
their entire perception of math
changes.”
Using
tests to zero in on each student’s
strengths and weaknesses, the system can
identify where specific help is needed.
“We find
that a student who doesn’t like
division, for example, may be fine with
decimals but has trouble with fractions.
So it’s (on fractions) that we target
our efforts.”
Patel gave
up his job at Motorola’s Price Road
plant in October 2004, he says, after
deciding to embark on a new career—a
move he admits was exciting but risky.
“Always
since I was a kid I wanted to be an
entrepreneur,” he said, “as long as in
some way it involved giving back to the
community.”
He spent
six months checking out big-name
franchises, but his passion for numbers,
he says, led him to the smaller
Mathnasium, which originated in Southern
California 32 years ago and has spread
to 250 centers in the U.S. and around
the world.
Whereas
its Japanese cousin Kumon utilizes what
Patel describes as a broad-brush
approach, a kind of one-size-fits-all
strategy to teach both math and reading
skills, he says Mathnasium’s math-only
system involves determining how much
training each student needs and
tailoring a program to fit.
Besides
enabling him to nourish what he
describes as a “passion” for math, Patel
says he enjoys working with young people
from second through 12th
grades—including not only those who
struggle with numbers but others who are
math-gifted and feel they don’t get
enough stimulation in regular school
classes.
Although
his students are spread more or less
evenly across age and time-of-year
categories, Patel says there’s always a
rush of sign-ups prior to SAT or AIMS
testing.
Enrollment
fees, on average $13-14 an hour, are
based on a variety of factors, including
subject and the depth of training
desired. Costs are higher for
short-term, high-intensity programs,
considerably lower for long-term,
membership-style classes.
While he
has seen inspirational outcomes, Patel
points out, the system he uses isn’t for
everyone.
“We’re not
here to put on a Band-Aid. We turn some
people down because the student is
failing and, just as it took a while to
get to that point, it may take a while
to fix.”
Information: (480) 782-1924. |
