Natalia Manturowicz, a 2B Pure Mathematics and Teaching student talks about her first co-op journey where she had the chance to work remotely for Centennial College as a math tutor.
As a tutor, Natalia’s work term focused on helping students overcome academic challenges. Natalia and her two colleagues were responsible for processing any appointments that students submitted if they needed support. They ran the math drop-in Instagram account that promoted tutoring events and provided tutorials on how to book appointments. Natalia also mentioned that her team would post fun math puzzles that they would provide solutions for later.
“Take more initiative and be more creative.”
Natalia says, “We would also occasionally run workshops for exam review or just for certain courses that students needed more help in. Another cool thing was that we would have meetings with our supervisors every week or every two weeks. We would have an article that we would have to read about, like math teaching or math anxiety, and we would just have a conversation about it. This was pretty cool because it sort of dived into the research aspect.”
What has been the most rewarding thing about co-op?
Natalia says, “The most rewarding thing has probably been seeing the effects of my work. While tutoring students, you sort of see their progress as it goes on. I personally had two students that I had constant weekly appointments with throughout the term. It’s just really rewarding to see how the effort I put in actually made an effect on someone. It was not only me that gained skills out of it, but other people did too. My supervisors and my team were so amazing, understanding and open. They definitely made the environment really comfortable.”
How have you maintained your well-being during your work term?
"Definitely being able to separate, my work life from rest life. Making sure that even if I had to prepare a tutoring session the next day, just trying not to spend too much time thinking about it. Especially being at home, it's easy to blur the lines and keep working sometimes. It's helpful having supportive supervisors because they asked us how we were doing on a regular basis and made sure that we knew that we could reach out to them if we needed help. Since it was the summer, I would take walks and I'm also pretty religious, so prayer was also definitely part of it."
