152%

That's how much our students surpassed their summer growth goals by. I talked about the diagnostic that we gave the students at the beginning of the summer - and then we go ahead and teach them a bunch of units and subjects for the next four weeks, and then at the end we give them the final exam.

Turns out the final test is the exact same test that they took at the beginning of the summer. Using the initial diagnostic, we use their test results, and many summers of TFA data to determine what their approximate growth goal should be by the end of our time with them. For instance, if a student scored 30% on the initial diagnostic, using the TFA math magic, it calculates their growth goal should be somewhere in the vacinity of 70% by the end of the summer. So when they take the final exam, their score should be around 70%. If they scored 70%, then that means they met their summer growth goal by 100%. However, if they scored something like 50%, that means they met 50% of their summer growth goal. But if a student scores 90% on the final exam, that's like saying they met 150% of their summer growth goal.

The average on the final was 87%.

I don't know any facts or figures for certain, but I would be willing to bet that our students have one of the highest growth goal completions in all of LA institute, if not TFA. Most of the other collabs were reporting scores of 99%, 107%, which is fantastic, don't get me wrong. But I am so proud of our students for completely blowing the statistic out of the water.

It was hilarious because this morning, when we got to school, we all had this really somber attitude, and the students were heavily picking up on it. They were all really psyched to see how they did, and they could tell that we didn't seem very happy. So they were all getting super paranoid... And then we broke the news to them - that they had averaged 87% on the final, and they all started cheering.

Afterwards we met with them, one on one in the hallway, and talked to them about their goals, what they did to get there, and what they can do to continue on that path.

This was such an amazing experience - I can't believe how close I've become to these students after only four weeks. It's hard to imagine what thing will be like after an entire school year.

There were a number of awesome moments that stuck out from today. One is that I spent about 45 minutes talking to the class about a bunch of the projects that I worked on throughout my engineering education, and showed them some videos and pictures of my projects. After class, I had no less than three students who mentioned to me that they had been thinking about doing engineering, and after listening to me they felt a lot more confident about the idea.

Another moment was during class. One of our students, Amber (the same one who organized the cake for my birthday) pulled all four of us aside, and gave us each a card, and then proceeded to tell us what an amazing impact we had had in her life. She said that prior to coming to our class, she felt that she didn't understand math, that it was impossible and that she wasn't very good at it. But somehow, through our instruction, we showed her that not only was she capable of doing math, but she could do it well. She told us that we taught her to believe in herself, to have self confidence, and know that she could achieve what she set her mind to do.

This blew me away... This was the entire reason that I really wanted to join TFA, and I figured that this was an impact that I could perhaps have over the course of an entire school year. But never in four weeks. And yet, somehow it happened.

And lastly (of the many), was another student, Jessica. She stuck around after class, and had something to say to all the four of us. First, I should give a precursor about Jessica. Jessica is brilliant, but she was really sick for a lot of summer school (she missed at least an entire week, which when you consider the fact that we covered four topics daily, is like missing about 2 months of class during the regular school year), and so it was a tough road for her. But she came, she got all the homework, she worked on it, she studied it, and when it came to test time, she rocked it. Jessica had to get up at 5 am, and ride two different buses in order for her to arrive at Hamilton on time.

Jessica started off by telling us that she had had awful math experiences in the past. Her last math teacher failed her because he lost her homework, he lost her test scores, and never gave her mother an audience for a parent teacher conference. She had another math teacher who she said didn't teach her anything, who's life was threatened by a student to give him an A, and he did it. He had no control over the classroom, and she said it was literally a waste of time. She said prior to us, she hated math.

But over the course of the last four weeks, that opinion somehow changed. Jessica has ambitions of attending Berkely, and wants to become a teacher. She always had figured it would be in history or English, two subjects that she feels really strongly about. But not anymore. Now she says she's considering math, because she loves the way that we were able to break things down for her, how she was able to grasp the concepts, feel in control, and actually have fun with it!

And of course, we cried. In all of them, we cried.

What an incredible experience... it's been somewhat like a dream, there have been some definite highs and lows, but at the end of the day, one thing is certain: I'm making a difference.