Ashley Huang

As a junior at Sage Hill School, I am participating in the Math Field Day faculty led project for Service Learning this year. I am particularly interested in STEM, and math has always been one of my favorite subjects.

I decided to be a part of the Math Field Day project because I'm interested in having my first experience organizing and creating a math competition. I have always regretted not going to some kind of math competition like this when I was in middle school, or even elementary school. Now I realize how fun it might have been for me if I were to have an opportunity competing in such an event. Having this experience, I really want to be a part of this group not only to have fun, but also to help middle schoolers learn and enjoy math, since the competition gives students an experience of math that is differently from their math classes. In addition, this project is very attractive for me since I can use my knowledge of math to help make a test and see younger students learn from it.



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I'm working on the Algebra/Probability part of the test in Math Field Day. Today, everyone in our project tried out some of the possible countdown problems. It stuck out to me that these problems don't require much background knowledge, but instead, students need to be able to utilize and understand what they learned to answer the problems. I enjoyed researching for engineering project choices, and going over the problems created by others in our group, because it is my first experience testing the problems, and I learned a lot about the format and schedule of Math Field Day. 

Math Field Day aims to promote mathematics and create a fun environment for middle schoolers to learn math. Working in Math Field Day directly contributes to the community by helping children develop an interest in math. Because there is a difference between my math level and the level of math the middle schoolers have, I need to recall what I learned in middle school, and create problems that are relevant for the contestants. Although the countdown problems we went over today were above the level for middle schoolers, we will be able to learn from this experience and create problems that fit the contestants the best. 

Many of Sage's 6Cs are demonstrated in Math Field Day. One of the most important ones is communication, because we need to communicate not only with others in this group to create a logical schedule and agree on the distribution of work, but also with our sponsors and math coaches from the middle schools to support and understand our project. Courage is also essential for this project, because we will face problems in the future and have to overcome them together. 

From today's experience, I learned to use my math knowledge to help support my community, instead of only using it to solve problems on the test. Since this is our first official day of Service Learning, we will be able to collaborate and work more efficiently as we begin to know more about each other.


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From today’s Service Learning experience, I enjoyed designing algebra and probability problems for middle school students, because math is one of my favorite subjects, and it was fun adding details to the problems and making them slightly harder than the ones in a middle school class. It stuck out to me how the problems we make and work we do can help middle school students develop an interest in math, and help them with their school math class.

By working for Math Field Day, I’m connected to my community that my work will contribute to the STEM education of middle school students in Orange County, and I also researched about the topics learned in Algebra I to design problems that fit the middle school math curriculum. I developed skills to use more advanced math to make math problems for middle schoolers, combining additional parts of the problems that are more challenging. There were challenges about clarifying the questions and making sure the problems are not too advanced for the middle schoolers. Members of my Service Learning team took the test and gave helpful feedbacks to revise the test, and we made corrections and reassured the practicability of the test. In our daily activities, we have the courage to face challenges to make problems doable for the contestants. To improve collaboration with other members of our team, we can give each other suggestions about the ideas for the tests, and discuss about problems we are not sure about. ​


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Today is the first day of Service Learning in 2018, and also in the new semester. We divided our group into three teams and built and tested our Engineering Challenge project in the pool. I enjoyed working with Britanie and Isabella and we built a boat with duck tape on the sides and four sealed cups on the corners. Throughout the process, we encountered challenges such as using up the allowed amount of tape, and our boat starting to break down in the pool. But all of our team members faced the challenges and solved the problems successfully. We developed team work and communication skills as we made the plan of the boat together. Also, we demonstrated courage and compassion when we tackled the problems multiple times. 

From today’s experience, I learned to cooperate with my teammates to reach our goals. We communicated patiently, allowing all of the members to express their ideas, which is what I believe to be one of the most important points in team work. Overall, we learned a lot today, not only from the Engineering Challenge, but also from our teammates. ​