{"id":8065,"date":"2022-06-22T16:27:00","date_gmt":"2022-06-22T21:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin-new\/?post_type=campus_story&p=8065"},"modified":"2022-06-22T16:27:00","modified_gmt":"2022-06-22T21:27:00","slug":"uw-superior-professor-michael-waxman-starts-tutoring-without-borders-an-academic-service-for-ukrainian-children-displaced-by-war","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-superior-professor-michael-waxman-starts-tutoring-without-borders-an-academic-service-for-ukrainian-children-displaced-by-war\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Superior professor Michael Waxman starts Tutoring Without Borders, an academic service for Ukrainian children displaced by war"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo
Professor Michael Waxman tutors a group of Ukrainian students.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Like many Americans,\u00a0Michael Waxman<\/a>\u00a0watched from afar with a heavy heart and a nagging question in his mind as the war in Ukraine unfolded. \u201cWhat can I do to help?\u201d he thought.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just broke my heart and I wanted to do something to help those kids,\u201d he said. \u201cThere isn\u2019t much I can do with money; I\u2019m not a rich man. But I realized that perhaps I could try to teach them something, provide some routine and reassurance \u2013 something from their pre-war past to help them get to a healthier psychological state.\u201d<\/p>\n

While his accent might imply otherwise, the University of Wisconsin-Superior physics and chemistry Ph.D. professor from Siberia has no direct ties to Ukraine \u2013 only a heart for its people and a desire to make a difference.<\/p>\n

With the idea of becoming a tutor for Ukrainian children in mind, Waxman asked his wife what she thought about him advertising free services on Facebook. She said, “I think you should do it.”<\/p>\n

Within days, he had been contacted by several interested Ukrainian students. Their circumstances and locations varied widely, but all had one thing in common. They had fled cities in war-torn Ukraine \u2013 their education and lives abruptly interrupted and forever changed.<\/p>\n

While his original intent was to tutor only a few children, Waxman\u2019s experience with one of his first students opened his eyes to the scope of need.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of my first tutoring students was a boy still living in Ukraine. He and his family left their home in Kyiv for a location near Nizhyn, and he was looking for help with physics. I told him he would need to go to Nizhyn to pick up a textbook for our lessons. He said, \u2018No, I will not go there. There is street fighting and I am afraid.\u2019 That conversation was eye opening for me, so we figured out a different solution. But after a couple weeks of online tutoring, his mother, who is a psychologist, sent me a message telling me that since the war began, they hadn\u2019t been able to even recognize their son. He couldn\u2019t sleep; he was afraid of loud noises, and had he become very withdrawn. She tried to talk to him, but nothing was helping. She said since I had started tutoring him, he had begun to return to his pre-war self. Before the war, he loved learning about physics. Now that interest had returned. That affected me deeply. I thought if I, a physics professor, could do this for one Ukrainian child, then how could I find others to join me and reach more.\u201d<\/p>\n

That encounter inspired Waxman to contact Vitaly Vanchurin, a former physics professor from the University of Minnesota-Duluth and currently a research professor at National Institutes of Health, with an idea to create \u201cTutoring Without Borders<\/a>,\u201d a grassroots nonprofit initiative matching online tutors with Ukrainian students. Waxman\u2019s son helped him create a logo and website, and Vitaly\u2019s son did most of the programming. Within weeks, nearly 400 students had registered and 150 tutors volunteered to teach.<\/p>\n

Through Waxman\u2019s new organization, Ukrainian students from first grade through college can sign up to receive tutoring in any subject area. They are then matched with tutors based on needs and preferred language. Lessons are individualized to meet the needs of the students, ranging from one-time help to ongoing group classes or one-on-one\u00a0sessions.<\/p>\n

\u201cI urge anyone who is interested in becoming a tutor\u00a0to sign up on our\u00a0website<\/a>,\u201d Waxman said. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to be a college professor and you don\u2019t have to speak Ukrainian. Elementary and high school teachers can help, as well as graduate students, college instructors and almost anyone who has a desire to teach and some subject matter expertise. Right now, we have 70-80 unfulfilled tutoring requests \u2013 some for lessons in Ukrainian language, others for English, German and Italian.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of Waxman\u2019s students, Peter, was able to leave Ukraine before the fighting started and is currently in the U.S. While traveling and getting settled, he had no access to school, but knew\u00a0it was important to keep up with his studies. His sister saw Waxman\u2019s post on Facebook and told Peter about it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been studying physics, chemistry and math with Dr. Waxman for about a month now and it\u2019s definitely been very good for me while I\u2019ve been in limbo with my education,\u201d he said. \u201cSome of the things we\u2019ve covered are review and some is new. It may even put me ahead with my education in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waxman has recruited several of his colleagues to serve as tutors and to help promote\u00a0Tutoring Without Borders<\/a>, including Dr. Sergei Katsev, a physicist from the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He hopes word will spread and more will join the effort.<\/p>\n

\u201cI estimate there are about a million displaced Ukrainian children and about 20 percent who would like to receive tutoring,\u201d said Waxman. \u201cThey are so hungry to learn and so appreciative. One of my students contacted me before a tutoring session and said, \u2018Dr. Waxman, it\u2019s still an hour until our lesson. How can I possibly wait that long?\u2019 I can honestly say that in my 30 years of teaching, I\u2019ve never had a student say that,\u201d he laughed. \u201cThis has been one of the most rewarding things I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

To learn more about\u00a0Tutoring Without Borders<\/a>, register a student, or become a volunteer tutor, visit tutoringwithoutborders.org. Currently, tutoring is only available to Ukrainian citizens.<\/i><\/p>\n

\n

Written by UW-Superior<\/p>\n

Link to original story: https:\/\/www.uwsuper.edu\/newscenter\/uw-superior-professor-michael-waxman-starts-tutoring-without-borders-an-academic-service-for-ukrainian-children-displaced-by-war_news4950158<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like many Americans,\u00a0Michael Waxman\u00a0watched from afar with a heavy heart and a nagging question in his mind as the war in Ukraine unfolded. \u201cWhat can I do to help?\u201d he thought. \u201cIt just broke my heart and I wanted to do something to help those kids,\u201d he said. \u201cThere isn\u2019t much I can do with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":8067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[110],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-8065","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-superior"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/8065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8065"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=8065"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=8065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}