Solving the math problem: Teen volunteers help kids at libraries

When school let out two hours early Wednesday, a lot of children headed for their neighborhood library to read or watch videos and wait for parents to get off work, but libraries play a more active role for many children throughout the week, and that role is growing.

What attracted my attention, is a program called Math Buddies at the Rainier Beach Branch Library in Seattle. Elementary-school students are paired with high-school students who lead games that help the younger students strengthen their math skills. I came across it on one of those daily event calendars and it diverted my attention from some of the challenging issues that had been on my mind, a shooting, some stats on income inequality, and so on. It reminded me that every day people are doing good things all around Puget Sound.

So I decided to go down to the library for an injection of positive stuff.

Wednesday at each of five tables, a high-school volunteer and an elementary-school student were playing various math games. Five-year-old Elle Chong was counting red blocks that Mohamed Hashi arranged into two piles that Elle had to add together. Each time she got the answer, he’d change how many blocks were in each pile.

Elle’s dad brought her to the library, and Mohamed, a senior at Rainier Beach High School, volunteered after a friend told him about Math Buddies. He needed the community-service points, he said, but it’s also been fun.

Elle attends Benson Hill Elementary School.

Sofia Rivera-Patton, 8, and her brother Emiliano, 11, both attend Graham Hill Elementary School. Their grandmother signed them up. Sofia said memorizing math facts has gotten easier since she’s been coming to the library.

Shakira Seneviratne, 6, a student at Rainier View Elementary, likes it so much, her mom, Sithara, says sometimes she doesn’t want to stop and do her other homework.

Wednesday, there were volunteers who attend several high schools, Renton High School, Cleveland, Garfield, as well as Rainier Beach.

Math Buddies started as a pilot project last fall to address some issues volunteers in the library’s homework-help program were seeing.

Josie Watanabe, formal learning librarian for the Seattle Public Library, told me the system has had free homework help for a dozen years. It’s available in 11 branch libraries where the need is high, usually because of a large population of English learners or families that qualify for the federal Free and Reduced Price lunch program.

Children drop in for help with assignments after school from volunteers. The volunteers noticed lots of missing math skills, sometimes related to the language skills math requires.

Watanabe said about 80 percent of the students who get help these days are English learners and many are from families who fled war-torn countries. The volunteers were seeing large numbers of kids who couldn’t complete their work, so that the volunteers had to spend time actually teaching math.

On top of that came the Common Core Standards, which, unlike traditional math, rely heavily on verbal skills and flexibility in math thinking. So, the library and volunteers came up with Math Buddies as a way to give the children more support.

The high-school students, who go through a training program, assess the skills of the younger kids then engage them in games designed to shore up particular skills. Watanabe said, “The games make you think about math in creative ways and make you talk about math.”

The program’s benefits are expected to go beyond academics. The librarians visit schools, community centers and other venues recruiting teens. They don’t look for the top math students, because the teens will be working with elementary-level math. Instead, they look for students who live near the library. “We want the kids to see positive role models from their neighborhood.”

And they want the teens to sharpen their own skills by helping younger kids. The older students should be better at math and also learn leadership skills. Watanabe also cited studies that show that giving back and mentoring have positive effects on teenagers. The community gets better students and better citizens.

Watanabe said she expects other branches to take up the program. She also said the library system is planning to adopt service-learning for teens on a large scale. They want teens instead of adults to create programs and carry them out as they gain tools for leadership and project management.

And Rainier Beach started a teen social hour last year to give children 12 to 18 a positive place to hang out.

Sure, there is always something going wrong, and we have to pay attention to that, but there’s good stuff happening around here, too.