On a weekday night, 8-year-old Soleha Yuldash is in pajamas on her couch playing a game on her laptop. It has colorful characters and bright sound effects. But, if you look closer, it’s not a typical video game -- it’s math!
“This is where you get your homework," she explains, showing off her math game platform "Beast Academy." "So, if you want to play, let's say the 2x2 area model, you just hit play."
The Naperville 4th grader -- who skipped Kindergarten -- is part of “National Math Stars.” It’s a program aiming to identify and support the nation’s top young math minds that just welcomed its first cohort of Illinois students — like Soleha — this year.
She has Zoom classes twice a week with a math mentor and a small group of other “stars” her age from around the country.
They study proofs and solve math crossword puzzles. Soleha can also go to her choice of a STEM summer camp and has a $3,000 annual budget to spend on math supplies.
Soleha says it’s really exciting. She’s thought a lot about how to spend that money. She’s always wanted STEM build boxes like “Hack Pack” to teach her more coding and engineering.
“But they were so expensive," she said. "They were like $300 for 12 in 12 months. So, my mom and dad said we can't get it. Now I'm like, 'I can actually get it!' So, that's the top of my wish list.”
Ilana Walder-Biesanz is the CEO of National Math Stars. She says their main program is based on both math ability and family need.
“The goal," she said, "is that a large chunk of these kids who might not otherwise have done so go on to not just be in STEM careers but be leaders in STEM — be inventors and researchers and founders who are creating new things and solving big problems."
Soleha tested into “Math Stars” last year. The program only takes 2nd and 3rd-graders. Walder-Biesanz says it’s the youngest age where they have some data to know which students excel in math and can engage in a Zoom class. She says the older students get, the more gaps in math performance show up, based on race and income level.
In fact, Walder-Biesanz says they have many students who don’t really do well in their school math classes because it’s too easy and they get bored. Their teacher may not identify them as a star student in math, but their aptitude still shows up on assessments.
And she says Math Stars is not just a one or two year journey. It’s a 10-year system to help students all the way through high school. Walder-Biesanz knows that sometimes makes parents skeptical. After all, the company hasn’t even been around for five years, let alone 10.
“If everything did blow up," she said, "would you rather have all of those opportunities for your kid for several years and then really know the path and really be tapped into this community, than not at all? I think still, yes.”
It’s grown a lot. Math Stars started in Texas a few years ago and expanded into the Midwest this year. They partnered with Iowa’s Department of Education to screen every school to identify students. In Illinois, Walder-Biesanz says they’re screening 10-15% of elementary schoolers.
In Naperville, Soleha fell in love with math and science a few years ago, helping her mom organize STEM activities at a summer camp.
“You know, in the movies when the witch is mixing potions?" she said, "I just really want to see what happens when you mix two substances, because it's such a mystery."
Not many elementary schoolers know exactly what they want to do when they grow up, but Soleha’s already got a mind for business.
Like a lot of 8-year-olds, she doesn’t care for chores. Unlike a lot of kids her age, she’s developing an app for that, called “Task-topia.”
“Kids hate chores, period," said Soleha. "But I think I can change that!"
She wants to gamify chores like “Beast Academy” gamifies her math homework and Duolingo does for language learning.
With Math Stars and her STEM build boxes, she’ll learn how to correctly code her app.
Maybe her entrepreneurial spirit will keep growing with “Task-topia!” But she’s still only 8 years old. In a few years she may discover another passion outside of STEM.
Math Stars CEO Ilana Walder-Biesanz knows it’s certainly possible, since the program spans those most-formative years from 3rd grade to high school.
“If a kid decides that their great passion is writing novels," she said, "I hope that the skills they learned through deeply exploring mathematics and being rigorous about problem solving, and the people they connected with on this journey in some way helped them with that goal too."
It’s a long journey, and Soleha’s excited to have more tools and help along the way. She’s thinking hard about which camp she’ll pick next summer and can’t wait to meet other “Math Stars” students in person.
“It's just like," she said, "so many doors [went] from closed to open."
She and her family hope that now, it’s just a matter of which open doors she wants to walk through.
