Welcome to the journey of making math fun as we explore the impact of the Bruce W. Woolpert Algebra Academy since it started in 2010.
Rose Ann Woolpert, Graniterock's family owner and Academy treasurer, shares the original mission of this unique program that has taught more than 1,100 students the joy of math over the past decade.
Rose Ann is joined by Christy Sessions, who serves as the Academy's Executive Director.
Christy and Rose Ann discuss the program's good work in providing students with the opportunity to take their math skills to the next level and make lasting connections with teachers and peers.
We take you through the experiences shared by the high schoolers and college professors at the Academy. We learn about the Academy's field trips to Cal State Monterey Bay, and how the professors are introducing innovative elements to the program.
We discuss the Woolpert Family Scholarship, aimed at students majoring in math at CSUMB.
Join us for this episode to understand how the Bruce W. Woolpert Algebra Academy is transforming the lives of students, making math not just accessible, but an exciting adventure.
Welcome to the journey of making math fun as we explore the impact of the Bruce W. Woolpert Algebra Academy since it started in 2010.
Rose Ann Woolpert, Graniterock's family owner and Academy treasurer, shares the original mission of this unique program that has taught more than 1,100 students the joy of math over the past decade.
Rose Ann is joined by Christy Sessions, who serves as the Academy's Executive Director.
Christy and Rose Ann discuss the program's good work in providing students with the opportunity to take their math skills to the next level and make lasting connections with teachers and peers.
We take you through the experiences shared by the high schoolers and college professors at the Academy. We learn about the Academy's field trips to Cal State Monterey Bay, and how the professors are introducing innovative elements to the program.
We discuss the Woolpert Family Scholarship, aimed at students majoring in math at CSUMB.
Join us for this episode to understand how the Bruce W. Woolpert Algebra Academy is transforming the lives of students, making math not just accessible, but an exciting adventure.
Well, the corporate office is buzzing with teenagers and teenage energy today and yesterday. So very exciting and, like we were saying, the first time that we've had the kids back since 2019. So you guys excited about that, of course.
Rose Ann Woolpert:You bet we're excited. It's like we just took a deep breath and now we're ready to go again.
Shanna Crigger:It's great to have one of Granite Rock's signature events back in person. Yeah.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Yeah, 14 years. We've been doing this 14 years. 14 years Started back with Bruce Woolpert and Kevin Jeffery, and here we are today. How many students do you think we've had go through the program have you? Oh gosh, have you calculated that? Yet I have.
Christy Sessions:I have because it's part of my presentation every year. So, as of this year, it's over 1100. Wow, yeah.
Shanna Crigger:So executive or we just passed the 1100 mark, Executive director Christy Sessions and Rose Ann Woolpert, Granite Rock's family owner and chair of the board for the Academy. What do we say? No, I am the treasurer. You're the treasurer. Yes.
Rose Ann Woolpert:So Kevin Jeffery chairs our board and we have Emmett Linder from Driscoll's.
Christy Sessions:That's all we have right now, currently, yeah.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Yeah, we need another member or two, which we've been. Well, we're just getting back in gear again.
Shanna Crigger:We are, yeah, getting back in gear again. So give us an overview of the Bruce W Woolpert Algebra Academy and the mission of the Academy.
Christy Sessions:Well, maybe, Rose Ann, maybe can you just speak to what Bruce originally wanted when he started this program, and then I can kind of pick up and say where we are today.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Well, Bruce absolutely loved math. He was a math major at UCLA. He thought math was fun and exciting and could be used in all kinds of ways and it just he just was very enthusiastic about it and he was very supportive of education, particularly in our community. He felt that that was our future and we just really needed to support advancement in education. And then, as now it was.
Rose Ann Woolpert:You know, there were a lot of reports that our students were not up to par in mathematics and so he wanted he was a person who got things done, and actually Kevin, I believe, maybe suggested it at first and Bruce went on board and said let's talk to Hongde Hu? Hongde is a professor of mathematics at CSUMB and Hongde was running boot camps for his students coming into the university. And so they got together and Hongde said I'll come and teach eighth graders. So for Bruce, that was, you know, slam dunk. Let's do that, because eighth grade is where algebra is taught and that's where students become engaged in math. Either they check out or they become engaged, and he wanted them to become engaged. So that's how it started.
Shanna Crigger:So Bruce own passion for math and wanting to jump into the community and help the kids here, and also wasn't he wanted to bring the kids into his business, his company, and show them how Graniter ock works and the possibility that they could have a career here.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Well, I don't know if he originally thought that through, but it definitely was a key thing about this program. I don't. You know, it just doesn't happen that students get to come into a business like Graniter ock and learn math around people that are using math every day in their jobs, and so we've really incorporated that into the program. We just had Reed Carter talking about geology and how he uses math and geology and how much fun it is to be a geologist and how much fun it is to work in construction, and we'd love to have these kids come back and get jobs at Graniter ock. We want people in our too to. We want students, young people in our community to come back and work here, because then we know they're more likely to stay. If they grew up here, they're more likely to stay. Their families are here their roots are here.
Rose Ann Woolpert:So that's part of that's a sideline, that's just a great part of what we do, and Driscoll's as well. Driscoll's is absolutely on board. Same thing they want to develop our community, have people, these young people, come back and work for them. So it's a great partnership.
Shanna Crigger:Yeah, it's a great connection between the companies and the community and inspiring these kids to want to improve their math and become passionate about math. It's not easy for everyone.
Christy Sessions:No, it's not. And so in the inception, in 2010, they started with one school, rolling Hills, which is local to Graniter ock it's right behind the corporate office and it went well and they, you know, continued it and now fast forward, 14 program years later, we work with 14 schools locally, 14, yep, 14 schools, like I said, over 1100 students that we've worked with, and you know it's it's big. We have our sites here at Graniter ock, we have Winitry schools, and these are kids that they were recommended for the program. Their teachers and their principals really see something in them and and they know that these are kids that, given the opportunity, really could excel, like Rose Ann was saying. And so it's.
Christy Sessions:It's really fun to be able to bring those kids together and have them be in an environment with other kids like them, who like math, who are good at math, because a lot of times in the schools, you know, in their classrooms, they don't always have the same kind of abilities and skills and interests in their classes, in the regular public schools, and so they don't. You know, maybe they're dumbing themselves down at school, maybe they're just pretending like they don't like math, but given this opportunity, this is sort of an eye opening thing for them and they get to be excited to excel and and so that's really exciting for me to see. And they make friends. We hear from our high school mentors that they made friends when they were at the Algebra Academy that they still talk to today. Our mentors just a couple of days ago were saying that to me. So that's really exciting too.
Christy Sessions:But yeah, I think that business connection is huge and that's one of my favorite things about this program is that, like Rose Ann said, these kids don't get those opportunities. It's not something that they get to do. Go into a business and, you know, in an actual working environment where they can see people working, just you know, 20 feet from them, and they get to see that and they get to picture themselves in those environments. And that was something that was so important to Bruce and so that's something that we really strive to bring forward. And sure, we could have our program at a school Absolutely, but the kids are always at school.
Christy Sessions:That doesn't make it special and I feel like they're. It's special here. It feels special to them. It feels special to their families. You know their families take a lot of pride in the kids being at this program as well, and then you know their siblings come through and they're excited that their little sibling is coming through, and so the whole thing just really it gives me chills. It makes me feel like we really are carrying that on that Bruce really was so passionate about, and we can keep that rolling, which I think is really important.
Shanna Crigger:Yeah, and most kids don't want to go to school in the summer.
Christy Sessions:But if you say, do you want to go to Graniter ock for a week in the summer they're like sure I'll have a bit more interest.
Shanna Crigger:Yeah, free lunch, and then yeah, tell us a little bit about how are these kids selected, because it's not just anyone can come right. I mean there's a selection process. Talk us through that there is we start by.
Christy Sessions:We maintain close relationships with our schools and we know the teachers.
Christy Sessions:I know the teachers and the principals on first name basis and they know the kids best.
Christy Sessions:So we start with them and the teachers, the seventh grade teachers, recommend the seventh graders from their school that they really feel would make a good candidate for a program. That would be a good match. So they have the maturity, they have the skills, they have the desire, most importantly, and we receive that list and then, depending on the size of the group that's being recommended, depending on the year in our facility, we may run an entrance exam, if that's something that we need to do to really hone in on the right size group that we're looking for. And we're looking for kids who have strength in math so that we can start a little bit higher up and really push them. And so it is a program that's advanced, it's a program that's rigorous and we want them to be successful, and so we start at that level and from there we have meetings with the parents, we meet with the schools, lots of communication and sharing about what we do, and they enroll. And here they are it happens.
Shanna Crigger:We want kids who want to be here, rather than you being forced to come.
Christy Sessions:Yes, and there's always that sense of like oh, I'd rather be sleeping right now.
Shanna Crigger:Right or hanging out with friends, Because it is summer. Yeah, there's always that.
Christy Sessions:But really for the most part, when it comes right down to it, they do want to be here.
Shanna Crigger:Yeah, it's so important. Walk us through sort of the structure and the activities of the week. What exactly are the kids doing while they're here?
Christy Sessions:So we present a structure that is familiar to them. So we have class sessions, kind of like when they're at school they have a class session and then they have a break and then they go back to class. So we have that same structure for them. So it's familiar. They're working with the same instructor from the university during the day and we have games. We build in different kinds of team building activities, board games.
Christy Sessions:In the afternoon we're lucky enough to have a wonderful cohort of high school mentors who are alumni who've come back to work with us. So we have our high schoolers and we have our teaching assistants from the universities that come in and so we do panels with them so that the kids can get to know them on a different level. And we ask the mentors what do you remember about the academy? What would you tell your eighth grade self? If you could go back and give yourself some advice as an eighth grader, what would you tell yourself? And they get to share their stories about math and how they've gone through their classes and what they're studying and the university, and so it's just neat. We find that the kids really connect the most to those younger team members, especially the high schoolers because they're closer in age to them and so they can relate to them more. And they're cool.
Shanna Crigger:They're cool, yes, cool right, because they're older and they like math and they like math, which is even better. Right, it's like a cool older teen who likes math.
Christy Sessions:It makes them such great role models because they're kind, they're hardworking, they're really good at math, super smart, but they just embody everything that we hope for these students. They've got these goals that are incredible and it's so fun for me to see we have all seniors this year that have come back to work with us and they just gosh. It just makes me so proud not to think that we are responsible for that because I know their other factors.
Christy Sessions:But they have such fond memories of being here and I like to think that it really affected their lives and where they go from here.
Shanna Crigger:That's great. Tell us about the instructors. I know we have UC Santa Cruz and Cal State Monterey Bay, which are the two prominent universities in our backyard here. But a professor who has been with the academy since day one he was part of the original program with Bruce and he still plays a role today Wow, Absolutely.
Christy Sessions:He's over at Driscoll's right now and Noah Doss is another CSUMB instructor that we have working alongside Hongde over at Driscoll's and here at Graniter ock. We're fortunate to have Justin Lake here joining us, again from UC Santa Cruz. Fantastic, and we're just. They are so dedicated to what we do year in and year out, and I think that is also a testament to our program and what we do and to be able to have these people who, year after year, they wanna come back, they wanna work with us. They're excited for the Algebra Academy. They don't have to do that during their summer either and they're choosing to come and teach these kids, and so we're fortunate to have them as well.
Shanna Crigger:Yeah, and why college professors? I mean, you could get high school math teachers in here, right? So what's your sort of reason for the college? Is it to motivate the kids, or what's the story behind having the colleges involved?
Rose Ann Woolpert:I think one of the great things about it is that they are able to throw in a little bit of what's coming in the future. So it's not just, oh gosh, you know, the same old, same old. We get this at school. It's a little bit, maybe it's a little bit of calculus or a little. Honda does wonderful fun games with math. You know he'll, he will do almost magic tricks using math and it really lights the kids up, like how did he do that? And so that's the kind of thing that a university professor that they're great at. So and I think it just it increases the level of the instruction in some ways and it's impressive. You know, these kids are getting really special people. So I think it just adds to the integrity of the program.
Shanna Crigger:Yeah, it must be exciting for them too to come home and say I had a college professor teach my summer mouth program right, and we had a young man from CSUMB who was a graduate student.
Rose Ann Woolpert:just for example, he studied shark.
Christy Sessions:You explain it you do a better job.
Rose Ann Woolpert:But he would bring in shark jaws and he'd say how do you think, can you calculate how much of a, how many grams of fish can this shark bite Right?
Christy Sessions:yeah, and the force with which the jaws close when it's eating. Wow, it was.
Rose Ann Woolpert:They were actual shark jaws, and that's the research that he's doing, and then he'd show slides of sharks and ask the kids, okay, what kind of shark is this? And we'd have students who were really into sharks and then know these obscure types of sharks and just really get excited about it. So that's the kind of thing that you just don't necessarily get in elementary school. Yeah, no, yeah, I definitely don't.
Shanna Crigger:One of the highlights, I think, for the kids of this week is the actual visit to Cal State, Monterey Bay. Can you talk a little bit about what they do there and the purpose behind that visit? What are you aiming to do?
Christy Sessions:Yeah, so they. First of all, they run an incredible program at CSUMB, not just for their own students but for our students, for any groups that come on site. They really just are so accommodating and they've got such a great team they have. We have speakers, we have Woolpert Scholars who are gonna be speaking from the university. Tell us a little bit about Woolpert.
Shanna Crigger:Scholars real quick for people who don't know. Yeah, this is really cool.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Yeah, so CSUMB has been just a tremendous partner with Algebra Academy from the very beginning, and when Bruce passed, they suggested that we create a scholarship in his honor, which we've done, and it's a mathematics scholarship. So students at CSUMB who are math, who declare themselves as math majors, are eligible for this scholarship, and the first priority is students who graduated from our Algebra Academy and the second priority is students who graduated from high schools in the Pajaro Valley in this region, and so it's a nice thing to be able to offer, and we've had a number of students over the years get this scholarship. One that we're really proud of is a young man from Watsonville who graduated from CSUMB as a major in math and right now he's a professional soccer player.
Rose Ann Woolpert:He's gonna be talking to the students this week. Right, I think so.
Christy Sessions:And actually they heard back from him and he can't leave his team as practicing and he can't miss the practices. That was unfortunate, but yeah, he's pretty fantastic.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Yeah, so anyway, that's basically. They're called the Woolpert Scholars and they're able to come back and talk to the kids about their journey with mathematics.
Shanna Crigger:That's exciting, Christy. You were saying this is part of the CSUMB visit.
Christy Sessions:Part of that, the intro. They'll be hearing from those students and one of them is a Woolpert scholar who was an alumni of the program, so, and he's actually a TA over at Driscoll's right now. So they get to hear from lots of different people. Hongde will be there doing his little magic trick, as Rosie and I'll tell you the magic tricks that he does with predictions, with math and the students go oh my gosh.
Shanna Crigger:He predicts their birthdays.
Christy Sessions:What it's really cool. He predicts their birthdays. He goes through this whole series. I can't even explain it.
Rose Ann Woolpert:I don't know how he does it, it's magic.
Shanna Crigger:Math is magic. It's really cool. I can see you can guess the year. Math is magical, yeah, okay.
Christy Sessions:Yeah, I got your year figured out, yeah, so they'll be doing that, and then they go to lunch at the dining commons, which is always really exciting for the students because they're on the campus and they get to go in and eat whatever they want, so that's always a highlight.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Among other college students?
Shanna Crigger:Yes, they're sitting with other college students. There's always people there, oh wow.
Christy Sessions:And then afterwards they have these lab rotations planned for the kids and so they do all kinds of things like from fog collecting, because it gets foggy in Marina where.
Shanna Crigger:CSUMB is yeah, just a little bit yeah.
Christy Sessions:Fog collecting to video game creation. They study. There's a shells rotation where they're actually studying the formation of shells. They do gosh. They're gonna be doing a bubble lab where they actually have these things and they look at the structure of bubbles and so just so many fun hands-on things that you know we can't bring all that to them here. As cool as Graniter ock is, we can't bring all of that here. So it's really neat to be able to go and utilize what they have. So it's just it's fun. It's really fun. They just have a good time. It sounds like it.
Shanna Crigger:Yeah, that's really cool To be able to see a college campus in your barely in junior high. Yeah, exactly.
Rose Ann Woolpert:I just mentioned a couple of other really great things about the program. One is that we do have offer field trips. It's very difficult right now. The schools are under a lot of stress in our community with a shortage of teachers turnover, so it's difficult for the schools to accommodate are wanting to do these field trips. They just don't have the teachers to cover. But we do offer them and we've gone out to the quarry for a number of years.
Rose Ann Woolpert:And had a two-graniter ocks quarry in Aromas and been able to you know, our geologists show them on site. This is what we do, and so that is wonderful, and we've also tried to encourage the schools to offer math festivals in the schools, and again, that's a cool factor here's the older students are able to talk about math. They wear their Bruce W Woolpert Algebra Academy t-shirts Very cool have their backpacks and teach younger students. They run math games, basically with the younger students and say this is fun. So what we're trying to do is develop a culture of mathematics excellence. That would be that, that is. The overreaching goal is to create a culture of mathematics excellence in the Pajaro Valley San Benito County region, our close-in region.
Shanna Crigger:So a lot of what you're talking about is beyond just this one week, beyond just the immersion week in the summer, that you're continuing to provide support throughout the school year and ongoing.
Christy Sessions:We really want to keep that momentum going, because we build momentum during this week and we want that to continue throughout the year and we want the kids to help be a part of that. So those are our ultimate goals.
Rose Ann Woolpert:And you know so, during the COVID pandemic, when that's in 2020, when we were first hit with that, it was like we were stunned. Is this the end of the Algebra Academy we just had. Everyone was just back on their heels.
Christy Sessions:Like what are we going to do? Because we're thinking we're not essential. I mean, people are like we have to do the essentials just to survive basically.
Rose Ann Woolpert:And so we're thinking we're not essential and Christy did an amazing job of keeping it going, with online learning Very difficult, so difficult Kept this thing going, so I have to hand it to Christy. She's been amazing. She's just been a really awesome director for this program. Really appreciate your work on that.
Christy Sessions:Thank you. I really do Thank you. That means a lot. It is an amazing pleasure.
Shanna Crigger:Oh, it's so cool, especially during the pandemic, like she's saying, when all the learning was shifted online. I don't know many teachers who were able to make that effective, so huge kudos to you.
Rose Ann Woolpert:And so we're really still coming out of that. This is the first that we've been able to be in person in four years.
Shanna Crigger:Gosh.
Rose Ann Woolpert:I cannot.
Rose Ann Woolpert:I mean four years, yeah, I know, so four years and so Christy is in a position now of here we are. Now let's see where we go from here. But it's been really a fulfilling journey and Graniter ock people have been awesome, being able to step in from everything from directing traffic to sharing their hearts of how much they love this company and what they get to do here. So it's and maybe dealing Blackjack on Friday afternoon and listening to the noise level and a bunch of 13-year-olds running in and out of the bathrooms we try and keep it down. So Graniter ock people have really been a great support, and same thing for Driscoll's. Driscoll's has been a wonderful partner.
Christy Sessions:We really couldn't do what we do without the people who are behind the scenes, who are supporting us. I mean and that goes for everybody the people who work at Graniter ock and Driscoll's are our instructors who come in, the mentors, the teachers. We couldn't do it without anybody, any of those people. So we never take for granted the people who work with us, because we know that they're choosing to.
Rose Ann Woolpert:We're basically running a one-week school once a year, which is kind of unique, it's so unique?
Shanna Crigger:Are there other programs like this? I mean, this seems like one or some similar.
Christy Sessions:But what I've found in the research I've done is a lot of them are fee-based, so families pay for their students to come and take part in a great opportunity, which is fantastic. We don't charge our families. We're a non-profit that is funded and we don't need our families to pay. And I think that I think when parents hear that it's the little light bulb, like what we get to have this extra opportunity, that's really really cool, first of all, and really beneficial, and they get to do all these things and see all these things and we don't have to pay and the school districts provide a bus. I mean, what more could we ask for? It's amazing.
Shanna Crigger:Wow, yeah, a lot of programs like that would be like hundreds of dollars.
Christy Sessions:Oh, thousands, yeah, thousands.
Rose Ann Woolpert:I saw a program I think it was about $1,200 for a week for the students and so the Bruce W Woolpert Algebra Academy is a non-profit. It's not part of Graniter ock or Driscoll's heavily supported by you know, providing volunteer help and a site and just all the benefits that that means but it is a separate not-for-profit organization.
Shanna Crigger:Well, awesome you guys, any plans for the future that we want to share, or any? Just keep it going and bring it back again next summer. Keep it going through the school year. Gosh, we have so many hopes.
Christy Sessions:There's so many hopes and goals and dreams for the program.
Rose Ann Woolpert:We were looking at and really actively working on expanding into Monterey County when the pandemic hit, but that obviously had to be put on hold and so we haven't gotten to that yet. And it is. That is one of the limitations of a once a year program is you don't get to say, well, next month we'll do this differently. You know it's next year we'll do this differently. So it's a slow moving organization that way.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Although we're constantly working Christy's working with faculty on updating the curriculum, making sure that it connects with what is going on in the schools. And did we mention that we have local teachers that are also participating in the program? Maybe?
Christy Sessions:in passing, but that's a huge part of what we do too is the eighth grade teachers from a lot of our participating schools come and they spend their weeks with us too. So I mean gosh again summertime when I was in the classroom. I was in my classroom working during this first week in August every year, but they're choosing to be with us.
Rose Ann Woolpert:And they're paid for their time as our mentors. And it's actually an enrichment opportunity for teachers because they're learning techniques and ideas from other teachers from the faculty, so it's a benefit for teachers as well, which is really important.
Christy Sessions:Yeah, those kids who are incoming eighth graders will get to connect with the teachers before their school year even starts. So these kids will be eighth graders starting in a couple of weeks and those teachers will be their math teachers and so they get to know them and that's. That's a neat special connection that they get to have before the other students do.
Shanna Crigger:How do you get a head start on math and, yeah, your class work ahead of time. That's great. Yeah, Very cool. Well, congratulations. Amazing that you were able to bring this through the pandemic like you did and keep it going when there was a lot of doubt cast about the future and what was going to be possible. But amazing, and it's so great to see all that energy here in the corporate office and the young faces. Yeah, lots of energy, which is great. It's short, it's only goes on.
Shanna Crigger:Of course, yeah, because then they've gotten comfortable, they've gotten used to each other, they've gotten used to the instructors. Yeah, yeah, well, awesome. I'm so thankful that you guys were able to break away for a little bit and have this conversation.
Christy Sessions:Thank you so much. It was really nice to sit in top.
Rose Ann Woolpert:Yeah, thank you, and thank you for not throwing any curveballs.
Shanna Crigger:My pleasure, Roseanne.
Rose Ann Woolpert:She had me a little worried. I know, I was a little worried.
Shanna Crigger:I'm like come on, I told you, I'm really easy.