Mariana Uliak, 26, always dreamed of becoming a teacher, but was certain she would end up teaching her favorite subjects of biology and ecology.
But when she came to apply for admittance to the faculty of biology of Vasyl Stefanyk Precarpathian National University in Ivano-Frankivsk, a city of 230,000 people located 450 kilometers west of Kyiv, she saw a huge queue of people waiting to do the same.
While wandering around the building in order to kill some time, Uliak stumbled upon an admissions office for the faculty of mathematics and computer science. She had a spare set of documents, so she decided to apply there on a whim. She was later accepted to the university’s math faculty.
She graduated in 2014 and since then has been working as a math teacher at Lyceum No. 10, in Kalush, a town located 25 kilometers to the north-west of Ivano-Frankivsk.
The young teacher believes that nowadays students have little motivation or interest in studying — if they fail at doing something, they give up immediately.
Bright idea
With this in mind, she set about finding ways to help children learn mathematics in a more interesting and engaging way.
She eventually hit on the idea of creating a math course social media account for students in Ukraine.
And she opted to set up a mathematics course on Instagram — one of the most popular social networking services among teens, which, for many, is a huge part of their lives.
Finally, on Jan. 10, Uliak started a Ukrainian-language account named insta_math_help dedicated to mathematics both to challenge the stereotypical view of this subject being difficult, and to popularize it. It’s worth learning about mathematics, she says, because it develops logical thinking and “helps to put your thoughts in order.”
On the account, Uliak posts bright and arresting images depicting math tasks, with answer options. She posts the correct answer with an explanation a day later. Uliak shares an analysis of the common mistakes in math, and explains mathematical problems and terms, such as quadratic equations or the principles underpinning trigonometry.
Golden rule
When selecting content for the insta_math_help account, Uliak draws on official lesson plans for students of different grades. However, her golden rule is to focus first on sharing the solutions and explanations of problems suggested by her followers.
Although she expected the account would only be of interest to her students, she was pleasantly surprised to find that the children’s parents and her colleagues began to follow the account as well.
During the first month of the account’s existence, it passed the 3,300 followers mark, and the number is growing daily. As of March 14, it had more than 3,400 followers.
Easy and useful
Given that children very rarely read up on subjects in textbooks and find it difficult to pick out the key concepts from large texts, Uliak’s teaching approach is especially effective because she presents a brief yet clear explanation of each topic.
Several days ago, one of her followers wrote to tell her that he had managed to get an “A” grade on a test just because he saw the Instagram post and learned the topic the night before.
Uliak wants to launch a similar account on YouTube, because, according to her, a video explanation would work even more effectively. Unfortunately, this is still only a dream, as the teacher does not have enough time, working in the lyceum and developing the insta_math_help account on her own.
“My goal is to show that there is another side to mathematics, and to prove that this subject is easy and useful,” Uliak said.
