ECA Name: Math & Engineering Teaching Club
ECA Category: Social, Charitable
Chairperson: Xinmei Xu
A brief ECA description
Math & Engineering Teaching Club (METC) was founded in 2022; METC is a charitable organization which aims to promote STEM education among teenagers and evoke their interests in science and math.
♦ Progress Summary
Within less than a year, we have hosted more than 10 times of online and in-person teaching, initiated an on-campus book donation activity in collaboration with other ECAs, published scientific articles and videos on social media and gained popularity and likes from more than 100 subscribers. More specific progress is illustrated in the “Progress Breakdown” section.
♦ ECA Structure
With 50 members, METC is divided into departments of teaching, publicizing, external relations, and planning. Each department is organized by the head of department who form the METC’s leadership team.
Progress Breakdown
1. Online Teaching
The first activity that we did since the establishment of METC was online teaching. We taught primary school students from grade one to six in a countryside school in Henan Province. The process of implementation was not easy though; we encountered the COVID-19 pandemic where schools were closed, and communication difficulties when students we taught do not speak mandarin well. However, through our mutual supports and efforts, we passed the obstacles by rearranging our teaching plans, remaining contact to schools, and building patience during our teaching. We were surprised and delighted to see that, by remaining our patience and asking students questions about their daily life, students were more willing to interact with and share to us about their thoughts.
Class materials designed by our members across various subjects, including math, engineering, biology and geography:
2. In-person teaching
After the effects of the pandemic had reduced, we organized in-person teaching to students in grade 7th in a Shenzhen middle school. We designed engaging class activities and encouraged students to share their ideas no matter they were correct or wrong.
We felt excited to share our knowledge to teenagers and hear their response and questions. Not only knowledge was transferred in process, but the interaction of emotions was also inspiring, filling us with warmness and energy.
3. Book Donation
We heard the need expressed from the president of the Henan primary school we were teaching, that their library could not fulfill the reading needs of students; the books were old and lacking diversity and quality. Therefore, we generated the idea of hosting a book donation on campus. In order to extend the impact of the activity, we collaborated with Daily Study Club, Shuji Club, and the Service-Learning Division of the Student Leadership Body.
From planning the book donation event to launching it on campus, we were supported by each other as well as the school. We would like to express our appreciation and gratefulness to everyone who contributed to the book donation event.
We have collected more than 100 books in the categories of science, literature, English, and other educational books. We delivered them to the Henan school and received positive feedback from the president and the students.
4. Scientific articles and videos on social media
We have published more than 10 videos and articles on the WeChat public account of METC, across the fields of math, engineering, physics, and study science. The unique characteristic of our contents is that, we transformed complex knowledge to simple and easy terms to facilitate public readers to better understand the concepts; readers can acquire useful knowledge by reading our contents without any prerequisite knowledge.
Hear the voices from our leadership team
In 2022 July, METC was an idea from scratch; in 2023 April, METC has connected to the society in various meaningful ways. In building up METC with other motivated peers, we encountered countless difficulties from the external world and internal pressure generated by ourselves. Our mutual supports and determination helped us to navigate through the difficult times and led to stronger versions of ourselves: more capable to solve problems, communicate with people, and regulate mindsets during pressure, fear, and possibility of failure. Therefore, I would like to express my sincere gratefulness and appreciation to each important member of METC, teachers and peers who lent us supports, external groups such as the school presidents and the educational resource sharing platform, and our lovely students who taught us invaluable lessons.
I’m Celine, the head of teaching department in METC. We have made the volunteer classes for primary school students and junior high students in the whole year. We experienced the online teaching as well as in person classes. As the ECA grow, we managed larger number of teachers and more students. We inspire them to love engineering and math, to embrace the technology and theoretical knowledge. I designed the syllabus for teaching to give the club members a case to use. But we also encourage every member to design their curriculum and convey their passion for the area that they are interested in. We start from 20 people and now we are a family of 50. We believe METC will inspire more kids and build a community for students who love STEM.
I am a senior of the Publicity department of METC. I am responsible for organizing members to shoot in each event, and modifying and reviewing post tweets. At the same time, I also discuss each activity plan with other seniors and how to teach stem subjects more effectively to young children. In this club for almost a year, I have been exploring how to explain a complex knowledge to young children and how to capture their interest. One of our activities is to record popular science videos. It is hard to imagine how we can vividly record a knowledge or a physical phenomenon into a video just in front of a computer and post it on social media such as Bilibili. In order to make the audio coherent with our blackboard writing or images, we need to record a 5-10 minute video in English or Chinese without any mistakes. In this process, we tried many times, and finally the recording was successfully completed. In the next semester, I will continue to participate in this club, and I hope to meet more students who are willing to share their academic knowledge and young children who are eager to learn STEM.
As the deputy-leader of Mathematics & Engineering Teaching Club. The experience of working with other members and seniors in the club to club is really wonderful. At the first time we start online-teaching in classroom, I was responsible to connect with each "teachers" to ensure that each lesson is on the track. A sense of admiration evoked from my heart when I saw our members were teaching children who lived in village online in each classroom. In other area of our club, I host a book donation activity which successfully collected hundreds of books and we sent them to a primary school in the inland village in China. METC makes me understand the sense of satisfaction after helping others is unique and indispensable. Recently, we are planning to send some academic videos related knowledge of science and physics on the internet. I hope this plan could be accomplished perfectly because it means that we are helping and teaching more peoples.
My primary role is to assist the head of my department to ensure the quality of education provided to the students. I would go through assigned course designs and powerpoints and give out improvement suggestions to related members. I am also positively reacting to club activities such as the discussion on projects and article-writing. My vision is to allow all to be capable of engineering skills that would enable them to design, manufacture, and utilize structures and machines of their interest. During the experience in METC, I believe that I have enhanced my knowledge through giving out knowledge - a process requiring not only skill, knowledge, and also patience and a sense of mission.
As a member of the Engineering Club, I have had a fulfilling experience teaching young children basic STEM knowledge and doing interesting experiments to spark their interest in science and technology. It has been a great opportunity for me to apply my own knowledge and skills in a meaningful way and to inspire the next generation of innovators. One of the most rewarding aspects of being part of this club is seeing the children's excitement and curiosity as they learn about science and engineering. I have learned that teaching can be a two-way process where the students can also teach you something new. For instance, the children's different perspectives and unique ways of thinking often lead to creative solutions to problems and innovative approaches to experiments. In addition to hands-on activities, we have also written short passages and recorded videos to popularize interesting facts about STEM and share them on social media platforms like WeChat and YouTube. This has allowed us to reach a wider audience and inspire more young people to pursue careers in STEM fields.
This is a member and Minister of External Relations at METC. I will introduce the personnel and responsibilities of our outreach department. Our department currently has 6-7 members, most of whom are G1 students. We don't have anything difficult to do. We mainly communicate with some schools that are interested in offering teaching assistance. We need to have a general understanding of the club in order to help the other schools better understand the situation of our club and also understand the other schools’s situation. I personally believe that working in the external relations department can enhance our communication skills. Because sometimes we have to persuade the school to let us go for volunteer teaching, communication is very important at this time, and if we are not careful, we may lose the opportunity to volunteer teaching. We can learn a lot from it. This has exercised our abilities.
Conclusion
METC means a rewarding journey for all of us, in which we grow, think, and change. We hope that in the future, METC will continue to act as a platform for more teenagers with talents and missions to share their knowledge and create positive impacts on the world; meanwhile, we will constantly think about the roles that we play in the society and grow together with the power of interactions.
- Article / Suzy Xu
- Pictures / Suzy Xu
