Nassau County teen helps other students with tutoring website

PLAINVIEW, Long Island (WABC) -- The holiday break couldn't come soon enough for so many students overwhelmed, anxious, and just trying to keep up with their school work as the pandemic worsened in a matter of days.

"A lack of focus. I mean, we're all going through mental struggles because of the pandemic, and the difficulties it's caused us," Srijan Sai, a 12th Grader, said.
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For Srijan, it was derivatives in pre-calc.

For middle schooler Jayden Axelrod and her family, it was pre-algebra. Let's face it, parents do not make the best math tutors.

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"As you know, math is taught a lot different than when it was when I was a kid," Craig Axelrod said.

Mitchell Meyer had the answer - Blastoff Tutoring.



It's an online tutoring site he actually launched back in March of 2020, initially because the pandemic was restricting the ways that honor students could gain hours of community service. Meyer, a senior at Plainview-Old Bethpage, says it has become so much more.

"So the learning loss from students who, whether a close contact or get COVID, have to quarantine for 10 days, it's not easy to make up 10 days of work," Meyer explained.

It is easy to log onto a virtual session with an honors student and get answers to your questions for free.

Most of the tutoring is for science and math, but also for music and foreign language depending on who's available.
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Meyer is hoping to grow his site even more.

"The passion that drives me to keep expanding it..is seeing the reaction of both students and parents," Meyer said.

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Using National Honor Societies to network, Meyer now has at least 70 different tutors signed onto his service from 5 different states - New York, Illinois, Michigan, North Carolina, and Texas.
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While the pandemic continues to make education unpredictable, Meyer is just hoping those who sign onto his site can find something to count on.

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