COVID-19 Updates for BEAM Supporters
November 20, 2020
Dear BEAM supporters and friends,
It doesn’t need to be said that our students and their families were hard-hit by the pandemic. From schools closing to families’ loss of income, it’s been an especially difficult time for our community.
While affluent families have been able to make up for school closures with outside learning opportunities, enrichment, and tutoring, those options simply aren’t affordable for our students. We knew we had to respond, so in the spring we made a commitment to run our summer programs online. Not pared down, but full-featured programs with hundreds of contact hours that could ensure the families that rely on us would have access to top-notch learning opportunities.
The result was tremendous. To be sure, not everything went the way we planned, but in the end we had 427 students across New York and Los Angeles learning all kinds of exciting math, building a community of peers, and challenging themselves to new heights. After all, our kids have big dreams, ranging from electrical engineer (Benjamin) to NASA staffer (Dayanara), not to mention astrophysicist (Frankie), pediatrician (Daisy), aeronautical engineer (Giovanni), game designer (Ricardo), marine biologist (Gabi), and many more. Given the current economic and educational challenges, we believe our work is essential to ensuring our kids have the access to achieve their goals.
This fall, there continue to be lots of struggles. Most of our middle and high school students are attending school remotely most of the time. Eighth graders in New York don’t know yet how high school admissions will work this year, and 12th graders are navigating college admissions amidst numerous unknowns. Many of our college students are doing school from home, and even for those who have returned to campuses, there are extra challenges ranging from sudden campus closures to colleges that have eliminated all vacations (so they can end the semester by Thanksgiving).
We are responding with online classes for 7th-12th graders to ensure students continue to be challenged academically; with tutoring for high school and college students struggling with learning online; with individual coaching through uncertain admissions processes; and through a continuing Emergency Relief Fund to fill critical gaps in family budgets. In the midst of these challenges, we are inspired by our students. They bring genuine curiosity and dedication and a real sense of fun (see memes, below—no really!) to everything they do.
Here is a brief summary of our continuing work, with more details below:
Summer programs ran (very) successfully online! BEAM students, families, and staff are so happy with how the summer programs went: 427 students completed Discovery and Summer Away (more even than last summer’s in-person programs). Students grew mathematically and formed a rich, supportive community. Check out this 2-minute video of students reading comments they wrote to us about their summer with BEAM.
Here’s what Olivia told us about her summer with BEAM: “If it weren’t for BEAM, I would have never learned about the Fibonacci sequence and Pascal’s pyramid, and I would have never seen numbers in such a beautiful way!”
BEAM continues our weekend classes online. We are offering both math enrichment and life skills courses in NYC and LA for 8th-12th graders, and we stretched to start a brand-new program with online classes for 7th graders to help when schools and families are challenged.
We are helping 8th graders navigate the high school admissions process. 8th graders in LA are meeting one-on-one with BEAM staff to finalize high school applications. In NYC, we’ve launched a brand-new high school admissions web portal (coded in-house), and are preparing to meet with 8th graders as soon as the high school admissions process for this year is announced. High school admissions advising is particularly important this year with so many unknowns about the process—and when it is more important than ever to attend a strong, supportive high school.
We are supporting 12th graders and college students with one-on-one advising as they navigate everything from college admissions, to financial aid, to online classes all in a changed world. We are particularly focused on helping BEAM college students stay on track to meet the requirements of their STEM majors and graduate on time.
BEAM National has begun recruiting partners nationwide in preparation for rolling out its new Entry Points Program with 5th graders in January. We have partner schools in California, Michigan, New York, Tennessee, and Virginia for this pilot year.
Since the spring, we have provided more than $100,000 in direct aid to BEAM families through our Emergency Relief Fund. We are currently supporting 101 families in NYC and LA with monthly payments of $100 each to ensure they have internet for school and other essentials. We will continue aid at least through January, and, if funding allows, through the spring.
Your gift to BEAM is worth more than ever! BEAM’s matching campaign has launched, and our Board of Directors has personally committed $670,000 in matching contributions for all donations between September 1 and December 31. During that time, all gifts will be multiplied by pi. Plus, we are encouraging new contributors: all $10+ donations from new donors will have an additional $100 added to the match. Donate here, and check out BEAM’s Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn for campaign updates—please share!
In this year that has been like no other, we are especially grateful for your support. Your donations help keep our students connected to deep and interesting math, and ensure that the BEAM community stays strong and continues to grow. Thank you!
Read on for more details—and we wish everyone a safe and healthy holiday season!
Summer Programs
We are incredibly excited about what our students—and we—were able to achieve this summer! In just two months (and with the help of some two dozen volunteers), we managed to completely redesign our summer programs and prepare new training for summer staff.
The pillars of our programs are deep mathematical learning, community building, and development of self-identity. Through a mix of online classes, daily small-group community check-ins, an online chat platform, and online games and activities, we feel like we accomplished all of our goals. BEAM students had moments of real mathematical discovery and built a rich online community—plus they had fun!
427 students completed the program and overall attendance was greater than 90%, showing students’ drive to access new opportunities.
BEAM students love a challenge. After BEAM Discovery, 93% of students told us they look forward to solving challenging math problems, and 97% of students agreed that struggle is important to math learning.
Math skills grew. At BEAM Summer Away, we asked students, “On a scale of 1-7, how much do you feel your math skills grew this summer?” 95% of students answered 5 or higher, with 33% of students answering 7.
Joy in mathematics. When we asked students, “How much fun was this summer?” (on a scale of 1-7), 96% of BEAM Summer Away students answered 5 or higher, with 36% of students answering 7. One of our major focuses of the year was to create community even with an online program, and this is a strong signal that we had significant success.
Oh, and the students made memes—here are two of our favorites:
Read more about summer programs in our newsletter and on our blog.
Finally, here are two students reflecting on their summer.
Brandon (8th grade, Los Angeles) wrote about his mathematical experience: “Something I liked about BEAM was relays. It was very fun to work with other people on hard problems. I also enjoyed Number Theory and Infinity. I never knew there was a way to compare [infinite numbers]. It was so fun. Number Theory with Dan and Juliet taught us a lot about tricky problems. We learned new techniques using different types of numbers.”
Ashley (8th grade, New York) wrote about what she’d tell a prospective student: “I would tell them that you meet amazing people who like the same things you like, you learn so much you didn’t even know was possible, and you’ll never regret going.”
Emergency Relief Fund
We are now providing monthly aid to 101 families in NYC and LA. Aid will continue until at least January, and we are hoping to be able to provide aid through the spring.
Families continue to use the money ($100/month for most families, but more for a few in particularly challenging circumstances) to cover basic needs, like food and utilities. In all cases, it is enough to pay for internet access for families, which ensures that not only BEAM students, but also their siblings and their parents can connect to schools, workplaces, and other vital services. Families have been particularly grateful to have a steady, reliable source of aid that they can count on each month.
BEAM is providing additional remote internet access devices for those living in shelters or other circumstances where they cannot get a typical internet installation.
In the course of providing aid, we have also been helping families connect to other resources in their communities. Additionally, we have been loaning out BEAM laptops to families who have not been able to get them through their schools.
This Fall at BEAM
More than 290 7th-12th graders have signed up to take classes this fall. Because many schools have more limited academic opportunities now, we are offering classes to our 7th-grade cohort for the first time. (More than 100 have signed up!) The classes range from Math for Pirates (game theory) and Voting Theory (for our 7th graders) to The Mathematics of Money and Investing, and Crazy Polynomials and the Complex Numbers (for 8th-12th graders), plus more. Additional classes focus on life skills, SAT prep, and college essay writing support (depending on the student’s grade).
We are offering comprehensive support navigating the high school admissions process. In LA, students have met one-on-one with BEAM staff to complete high school admissions, while in NYC, we are waiting for the Department of Education to announce how high school admissions will work this year. When that announcement comes, we will be prepared to support students and families through the new process.
To help students in NYC, we have created an online admissions portal with information about high schools, a discussion forum, and video interviews with current BEAM high schoolers. We are also planning to hold virtual admissions workshops and a “Get Ready for High School Panel” of BEAM alumni.
While high school admissions advising is always an important part of what we do, we feel it is absolutely essential this year when so much (everything!) is unknown.
For our 12th graders and college students, we are providing online forums, email and text check-ins, and one-on-one virtual meetings to navigate college admissions and financial aid, and to make sure our college students are meeting the requirements of their STEM majors and staying on track to graduate.
BEAM National’s Entry Points Program has launched. At scale, Entry Points will reach thousands of elementary-school students from low-income and historically marginalized communities nationwide. Students will receive free access to Art of Problem Solving’s Beast Academy Online, as well as guided support from teachers, community organizations, and families. Students who do well will continue to a national, residential summer program in the summer after 7th grade, and BEAM will continue to support students through college graduation.
This year is primarily a learning year for us. We are currently recruiting a small number of partner schools and instructors; students will begin the program in January. We will continue scaling up successful models over the next three years.
Want to be involved? Please share our new Executive Director of National Programs role with your network.
If you are connected to a school, district, university, or community organization and want to make the program available to your students, sign up here to receive updates.
Learn more about BEAM National and Entry Points here.
Thank you all for your continued support! I hope you’ve enjoyed this update and hearing more about our work. Be safe and be well,
Dan Zaharopol, Founder and CEO (on behalf of all the BEAM staff)
Read our previous update from June 2020 here.
This page is designed to provide COVID-19 updates to BEAM funders and supporters. Our website also has information for: