My life as a Maths Consultant.

My experience as internee at the Supporting African Maths Initiative(SAMI).

There are many Internship work opportunities available at African Maths Initiative(AMI) some of which are even right on your doorstep at campus. However, the Supporting African Maths Initiative Organization offers internships to both undergraduate and postgraduate registered with the TSC or in the process. In this blog post, I’ll tell you the story of my life as a Maths Consultant and give you some general advice and opportunities you get while on Internship with SAMI and AMI.

The application process

I first became aware of this role when a teacher from the Maths Outreach team came to visit the school I was helping in teaching Mathematics after my fourth year in University awaiting my graduation. It was the end of the last week of term two, he  encouraged me to apply and I was given Mr. Mbasu’s contact who directed me on the application process. The role very much appealed to me from there (for reasons that will be highlighted later on!) and so I applied online immediately after. A couple of days later, I received an email telling me that I had been shortlisted for the interviews, which I was both excited and nervous about, seeing as up until then I had never done the interviews before. Around a week after that, I was blessed with the news that I had finally become a maths Consultant at SAMI, the internship that was to last for only one year.

My role

When I’m working as a maths Consultant, it’s fair to say that no two days are ever the same. Depending on the type of event I’m working on, my duties as a consultant can vary immensely. However, some general responsibilities include (but are not limited to):

• develop /adapt SAMI resources for students with special needs.
• Engage teachers and students with these resources in special needs schools.
• Encourage the set up of new Maths clubs/ Improve maths clubs in special needs schools.
• Help plan for and run maths camps.
• Develop teaching and learning resources for the kenyan curriculum including uses of the software packages Geogebra and STACK.
• Giving support to AMI internees.

The role is paid with flexible projects, meaning that if you have any project in mind you are invited to bring it forward.

What do I love about my job?

In all honesty, I love absolutely everything about being a Maths  consultant, but as I mentioned before, the role did appeal to me for many reasons. Firstly, I knew that being a Maths Consultant would give me the opportunity to meet new people, not just within AMI, SAMI, INNODEMS but also young people from schools around East African Countries, and being able to encourage both girls and boys to study Maths at university and talk about my experiences as a maths student is something that I still enjoy to this day. Secondly, being aConsultant for the School of Maths and Special Needs schools pushes me to take on new challenges and different levels of responsibility, and through this I can develop my transferable skills such as communication,Kenyan Sign Language skills, leadership and teamwork. I have definitely grown as an individual since starting out as an Internee and now Consultant!

Since I started my Internship at AMI I have had the opportunity to learn Grok, I was able to learn Introduction to Programming (Python). I have learnt to write online evaluation questions with STACK, program games and maths club activities with trinket.io, and create media for virtual maths club activities. I've also been able to learn how to use Taiga to collaborate in projects and manage tasks and how to incorporate technology into the teaching and learning of mathematics using Geogebra. 

Since I've been able to connect with junior and senior website and software developers at AMI, I've gained experience and expertise in the coding environment and software development.” 

Opportunities at AMI Internship

• Opportunities to visit different schools both Special needs schools and Regular schools in the country.
• Starting Maths clubs in schools and running the Virtual Maths clubs.
• Planning for the Maths camps
• Opportunity to visit different countries for Maths Camps

Last year’s holiday from 25th December 2021 to 2nd Jan 2022, I had the opportunity to visit the Republic of Tanzania for the 6th STEM Youth BootCamp. The experience was awesome.

• Learning Introduction to Programming.
   
• Whatever job you choose to take on, enjoy it! 

Hopefully, you now have an in-depth insight into one of the many Internship roles that AMI has to offer, or at least a brief exploration of working part-time whilst studying at university.

If you have any questions or want to find out more, ask me on My Linkedin. For new and upcoming maths students, I hope to see many of you applying to become Maths Ambassadors this academic year!

By Adinda Feleria Akumu, current Internee at AMI(African Maths Initiative) and Supporting African Maths Initiative.