Although Math Project primarily helps children achieve mastery and confidence in math, our team is also dedicated to giving back to our community in any way we can. Due to our commitment to uplifting our community, we are pleased to announce that Math Project has provided a $2,500 donation to the Mississauga Food Bank; an organization focused on alleviating hunger within Mississauga. The donation was made possible through one policy: our Highschool Homework Policy.
In 2018, our founder, Shehreen Zaman, realized that highschool students at Math Project could achieve even better results if there was more support and involvement from parents of the program. With that, she introduced a unique policy whereby parents of highschool students were motivated to take more charge of their children’s performance and learning in the program.
The policy required that highschoolers submit their homework on time for grading and feedback so that our teachers could be better prepared to address their weaknesses. Shehreen states, “My hope was to instill responsibility in my students, and prepare them for the unavoidable deadlines they would face in postsecondary education and the real world”.
Although all students were given multiple reminders, those who were still having repeated issues were charged a $50 fine for each late or incomplete homework submission. It was clear in the policy from day one that all fines were going to be donated to the Mississauga Food Bank, as the intention behind it was only to improve students’ results and not to make money off it. In addition to multiple reminders, extra time to submit homework was also granted to responsive students/parents before implementing the fine.
After the policy was introduced, the progress of students at Math Project increased drastically.
However, the initial design of the policy did not come without its flaws, as some parents were angered by the fine. To lessen the flak from parents while ensuring improvement in students, the fine was reduced to a half. We also ensured to communicate our intention behind this policy to each parent on a one-on-one basis, to foster a high level of understanding of our vision behind the policy. Those who gave it some time saw their children performing miraculously well in their school math.
“Not only did it produce excellent results for our program by improving students’ scores dramatically, it equipped our students with key life skills, such as time management, work organization, setting priorities, meeting deadlines, and above all, taking responsibility for their studies” says Shehreen.
Overall, our High School Homework policy encourages development towards success in our students, but also helps many others by providing healthy, sustainable meals to the vulnerable members of our community.
For more on Math Project and how we’ve transformed our students’ capabilities and confidence in math, check out our results, student success stories, and testimonials from satisfied parents here!
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