City Year: Sparking Interest in Students

| Blair Wong

Earlier this year one of our YouthSpark national nonprofit partners, City Year Chicago, began a monthly blogging series with us. Together with City Year, we’re working to spread the word of opportunities available to the youth of Chicago, uplifting them and youth around the globe. This month, Blair Wong of the Chalmers School of Excellence in North Lawndale writes about how working City Year has impacted Chicago students, teaching them STEM skills and offering Blair some skills of her own. We’d like to thank Blair and City Year for sharing this story with us.

— Shelley Stern Grach

City Year: Sparking Interest in Students

My name is Blair Wong, and I proudly serve at the Chalmers School of Excellence in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood! Growing up in a home with two parents who are software engineers, my brother and I were constantly surrounded by technology. From a young age, my parents would discuss the programming problems they faced at work, while my brother and I simply listened and tried to understand as much as we could. Math also permeated my childhood years, through tutoring from my grandmother and an intensive after school tutoring program—it wasn’t until my middle school years that I realized that wasn’t the norm. By the time I entered high school, I was much more confident in my math skills than anything else. Because of my parents’ computer programming background and confidence in math, I had a natural inclination towards a STEM related field and ultimately decided to pursue a degree in engineering in college.

It was late September of my senior year at Purdue University when I came across an article about City Year. At this point, I had a job offer with another company for a full time position as a mechanical engineer. After coming across the article, I spent the next couple of days poking around City Year’s website and more importantly, reflecting on how I had gotten to that point in my life. It was then that I realized that I had taken my education and support from my family and community for granted—there is no way that I could have gotten to where I am today alone! I saw students all across the country who do not have the same support and resources that I had, and the question that I had running through my mind was, “Is engineering even an option for these students?” How is it that I was fortunate enough to grow up in a home with two software engineering parents who always pushed me to do well in school and expected that I attend college? After a quick 48 hours, I decided to do a 180 degree flip and turn down my mechanical engineering job offer to pursue City Year in hopes of providing even a little bit of the support that I had grown up with to students that don’t have it.

City Year: Sparking Interest in Students

Now that it’s May and enough time has passed, I can take a step back and reflect on the impact that I have had with the students I work with. Over the last eight to nine months, I have tutored middle school students in math, cumulating over 135 hours total with at least eight students. I’ve also been able to help the science teacher in building robots with students and volunteering at the STEM fair. I decided to use this opportunity to teach my students one step equations through calculating voltage, resistance, and current. It’s hard to measure “interest in math and science” in a student, but I do think that I have sparked some interest in a couple of students through getting excited about applying math in practical, everyday situations or talking about all the incredible things that engineers can do or build. More importantly though, outside the scope of engineering, I have had the opportunity to build relationships with the students and encourage them to work hard at whatever it is they decide to do.

In just a few short weeks, I will be ending my time in City Year and moving on to a Solutions Developer Analyst position with Avanade, a Microsoft-focused consulting service. I’m excited about this opportunity because while I have enjoyed working with students, my passion is for technology and finding ways to use technology to make a difference. Still, City Year has given me many leadership opportunities and skills that I’m excited to use in the corporate world. I know what it’s like to work on a diverse team, communicate effectively, and choose to have a positive attitude in all circumstances. Most importantly though, City Year has given me a mission to be an advocate for education reform and it has given me a heart for social justice and these are the things that I can take with me no matter where I am.

To learn more about Microsoft’s commitment to youth and education, visit our YouthSpark Hub or follow us on twitter at @msftcitizenship.

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