Top-tier college students are holding virtual classes for 6th-12th grade learners in a free program called the Wave Learning Festival.
The festival’s courses are released in waves.
Wave also has conferences, such as the Silence is Violence Conference, set for 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at silenceisviolence2020.com. It is hosted alongside the Coalition to End Abuse, a youth-led nonprofit dedicated to ending gender-based violence.
The next round of classes runs Oct. 5 through Nov. 6, and registration is open now. There are 45 options, from physics to taekwondo.
UCSB sophomore Marian Walker is teaching a course about college admissions. She is a first-generation college student and had a stressful application process, so she wants to share what she learned to help her students.
This summer, she taught a class about climate change called “Our Planet is Dying” with two other students. She had 25 students ages 10-19.
“I thought it’d be difficult to teach that much information to a variety of ages and hold their attention,” she said, “but the students were super involved, and it was super engaging.”
Marian taught students from Canada and the Philippines, and other courses got more international participants too. Students were able to learn from other learners and share personal experiences.
“It’s a really cool experience getting knowledge from people in other states, other countries. It’s a very good connection builder,” she said.
Wave was created to assist parents and students when COVID-19 upset the traditional education experience. The platform quickly grew to register more than 10,000 students.
“There was a lot of boredom this summer since school ended early, so it’s cool to be in a class with their friends without the pressure of grades,” Marian said.
And Wave has become a popular resource with parents who don’t feel equipped to teach their kids every subject, she said.
For herself, Marian wanted to try out teaching and loved that she could create her own curriculum.
“I want to do education, and when I saw the opportunity to do service and create a class I could design, I took the opportunity,” she said.
It helped her reinforce what she’s learned at UCSB and in high school.
For more information, visit wavelf.org.
email: ahanshaw@newspress.com
