For the educators behind Cleveland’s Math Corps program, math is much more than just a school subject. It’s a new way to see the world, said Francisca García-Cobián Richter, the Math Corps Cleveland program director.
“Math is just a medium,” said García-Cobián Richter, who also works as a social sciences professor at Case Western Reserve University. “It’s just a way by which young people come together to support each other and see and realize their own greatness.”
Math Corps is a combination of an extracurricular math club and a mentorship program with tutoring mixed in. It’s open to Greater Cleveland students in grades 7 to 12. College students and instructors mentor high school students, while high school students help out younger students. That structure builds camaraderie and gives older students leadership experience, García-Cobián Richter said.
“It is a family,” she said. “It’s really a community.”
Applications are open online for Math Corps’ “Super Saturdays” winter session, which runs from Jan. 18 to March 8, 2025. Students meet at Case Western Reserve University every Saturday from 8:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. They start out with breakfast and games, then break into groups for tutoring.
To apply, students need to write a short essay and submit a recent report card, but admissions aren’t based on grades. Still, students with a “C” or lower in math need to submit a recommendation from a school staff member. Applications are due by Dec. 20.
“It’s not just for children that have a very positive or a very negative relationship with math,” García-Cobián Richter said. “We’re not expecting every child to love STEM. It is more than that. It’s providing that space for discovery of themselves.”
Does Math Corps help students academically?
Math Corps started in Detroit in 1992, and it now has 11 branches in cities across the country. In 2024, 39 students participated and 12 college students volunteered as mentors in the Cleveland Math Corps Super Saturdays program. Super Saturdays students take tests at the beginning and end of the session to gauge their growth. In 2024, middle school students improved their scores on that test from an average of 57% to 71%. High school students improved from an average of 62% to 74%.
Math Corps aims to teach math differently than it’s taught in schools, García-Cobián Richter said. Instructors let students dictate the pace of their learning, hoping to inspire curiosity about concepts they may not get to in school.
“It’s a Socratic-type method approach to learning things,” García-Cobián Richter said. “Like, what is the distance from here to the horizon? How can you calculate that? How can you model the beautiful world in a simple enough way that you can understand something about it?