First, in April, I made a math video teaching a problem-solving factoring technique. Kelly saw it, and she approached me asking if I would like to lead a “Zoom in on Math” call with two people from the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival (JRMF), Nancy Blachman and Mark Saul. I delightfully agreed, and I facilitated the online discussion with the adults and students. We talked about the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festivals and the switch from in-person festivals to virtual webinars due to Covid 19. Mark also shared some interesting math problems for us CSOs to work on together, and it was a great experience.
The week after I led this Zoom in on Math call, I decided to attend a JRMF webinar. They included an activity called “Nuggets for Sale,” based off of a famous chicken nugget problem about how you can split nuggets into different size packs. I was put in the teacher breakout room by accident; this big coincidence led me to become a facilitator and, later, an intern!
At the time, I didn’t know that I was in the breakout room for adults. We had a fun time discussing the activity and teaching strategies relating to mathematics – that’s when I realized I had been having a mathematics discussion with a bunch of adults! When we went back into the main room, they had the kids leave and the adults and facilitator stayed to debrief some suggestions for the webinar, and they kept me around, since they thought I was a teacher! I let Nancy know I was one of the Chief Science Officers and she introduced me to the group, and I offered to help facilitate future webinars.
In early June, Nancy also approached me asking me to help JRMF with outreach on the art of problem solving (AoPS) website. Soon after, she asked me if I would like to become one of the summer interns! I began an internship for activity development and outreach, and I also worked with some people to gather statistics from the webinars through excel. In addition to all of this, I continued attending, observing, and facilitating webinars.