Rohan Agarwal
As a long-time student of the Dynamic Teaching program in Cupertino, sophomore Rohan Agarwal recalls feeling a sense of profound excitement when he received an offer to teach as an assistant for the year-long program. Enrolled in math classes from a young age, Agarwal says that the teacher’s unique teaching style compelled him to study mathematics further, which motivated him to pursue a career as an educator as a teacher’s assistant both over the summer and in a year-long program.
“I was thrilled when the teacher offered me a job as a teaching assistant in the year-round program, because he was the one who inspired me to start doing math competitions,” Agarwal said. “I’m very grateful that my supervisor agreed and that we could make this happen, because it was a wonderful experience for me and the students.”
Agarwal says he’s grown as an educator by observing common problems during his classes. He says these problems have pushed him to find innovative ways to fix them, such as reorganizing his students’ schedule and implementing short breaks. He adds that much of the positive experience is attributed to his students’ individuality and curiosity, which pushes him to work harder.
“There was one student — very brilliant — but he would make a lot of loud comments and interrupt at times,” Agarwal said. “My first thought was to stop him, but for a student of that age, that’s not the best approach and may crush his desire to continue learning. We concluded that my supervisor and I could give him 15 minutes in the middle of the class to walk around outside and get his energy out, so he would be more prepared to come back to start learning.”
Agarwal adds that learning how to adjust the class to students’ needs has taught him all that tutoring entails.
“I originally thought tutoring would run something along those lines — where you go there, teach the math concepts, make them do some problems, and explain the solutions,” Agarwal said. “But in the end, I realized that it was so much more than that — it was classroom management. It was behavior management. It was getting to know where these students were mathematically at and tailoring how I presented the material to help them best understand and benefit from what I was teaching.”
Agarwal currently teaches a year-long class called Advanced Topics in Mathematics and hopes to teach competitive math in the future. He notes that the summer job has provided essential stepping stones for his journey as an educator and adds that his story from student to teacher has changed his perspective as a high schooler.
“It’s nice to interact with middle schoolers and experience that age again, because they look up to you,” Agarwal said. “You’re older, but you’re also a student who grew up here — so that’s inspiring to see, because sometimes as high school students, we can forget what we were like when we were just a little younger.”
Spandana Raghav
Junior Spandana Raghav frequently visits her family in India, but this summer, it was for a more ambitious purpose: she went to India for an internship. Originally introduced as an opportunity from her parents, Raghav accepted the summer job at Exotel Tech as a user experience designer, where she utilized her digital and user interface skills.
As a communication center company, Exotel Tech’s internship revolves around small tasks, working on projects that involve Figma — a digital app used for creating digital interfaces — and other projects involving general web development. Later, Raghav partnered with her supervisors to work on a project that managed incoming calls, where she built large spreadsheets to help organize the large amounts of data.
“The first week was a little slow for me, because we were just getting into it and were learning about the products, so a lot was going on,” Raghav said. “But I thought it was really cool to be in a working environment and see how people collaborate.”
Despite having difficulties acclimating to the work, Ragahv collaborated with other employees and worked out her problems with those who had more experience. She recalls that the internship gave her a glimpse at what a work-life might feel like — and how working with coworkers can lead to educational moments.
“My favorite memory was working with my buddy, who explained what the internship was all about,” Raghav said. “He explained the whole platform to me, along with the dashboard and what it does. We went through the entire thing, and he explained, just in general, what a call center does and what this company does as a service, and I feel his explanation had a meaningful impact.”
After the internship ended, Raghav says that the experience has been eye-opening for her, and she wishes to explore opportunities in telecommunication further. She adds how this experience has honed many skills for her, and how interacting with professional tools has exposed her to real-world applications — all while having fun.
“I really enjoyed making the screens and everything, and it was really fun since I designed them,” Raghav said. “I gained a lot of insight about how you can actually apply the UX designer role in a workspace, because I never knew how to do that before, and it opened a lot of options for me, career-wise.”
Kaden Lu
As a competitive swim athlete, junior Kaden Lu has always liked being in the pool and jumped at the opportunity to become a lifeguard over the summer. Since he started swimming at 5 years old, Lu wanted to expand on his opportunities involving the pool over the summer. After listening to advice from a classmate, Lu believed the job was a fun way to earn some extra money over the summer. He adds that the summer job connected him with a diverse range of co-workers.
“I really appreciated this summer job, since it was an interesting experience and I earned some extra money,” Lu said. “I worked with other people, including college students and high school students, and my coworkers now are pretty much my friends.”
As a Blackberry Farm pool lifeguard, Lu recalls feeling excited and nervous about the job, as he would constantly remind himself of the regulations required to be a lifeguard.
“The job was a little intimidating initially, since I had to be confident in my ability to remember a lot of protocols under pressure,” Lu said. “The major difficulty comes in being able to shout at kids running or breaking rules, since I don’t ever shout at strangers usually.”
Lu adds that being a lifeguard required mandatory and highly specific training, such as saving unconscious people and routine practices like CPR. Overall, Lu says that the experience has been worthwhile, as he’s learned valuable skills that are useful for everyday life as well.
“Getting a job was a very interesting perspective, since it has taught me a lot of important skills such as communication, logistics, managing money, etc.,” Lu said. “I think it’s valuable for us as kids to have a summer job experience to see what it’s like to be a working member of society.”
