Pros
-This is a great learning opportunity for both teachers and students and is good for people who just graduated from college, are transitioning between jobs, or are retired and looking for extra income (the loan benefit can transfer to children or grandchildren). The script we use is full of manipulatives and conceptual exercises which helps to hammer away some of the concepts that kids are struggling with. It is satisfying seeing the kids learn concepts that they couldn't understand before. I tutored mainly 7th and 8th grade and many of the students were actually working on algebra or pre-algebra but were still struggling with concepts like integers or long division. -I enjoyed helping out with afterschool activities and it was a flexible way to get hours. My favorite activity hand down was the First Robotics club at my school. I mentored them a few days a week after school and went to the high school competition with the kids. -There is a lot of general flexibility in activities you can do for hours and AmeriCorps offers great opportunities to get involved with community events, festivals, etc. -You can choose which (public loans) to pay off. This can work well with college/grad school if you can get rid of unsubsidized loans. They also cover interest accrued at the end of the year.
Cons
-We need to look for an address language barriers in the script. Many of my students had trouble with the "find a % of a number", "# is what % of #", etc problems and I don't think the MathCorps script covered this much better than their lessons -I think the script could be a bit harder for the 7th and 8th grade. The word problems should also be contained earlier in the script and should be more difficult (since the MCA is almost all word problems)
