Kahlil Gedin, a senior at Fredericksburg Academy, is the creator of Katal Math. For his senior exhibit, his focus is on helping teenagers in math, mainly through interactive tools such as a website, audio and video.

To narrow the focus of his senior exhibit, he decided to send a survey to math teachers that asked what concept in math gave their students the most difficulty. He sent the survey to 8th- 12th math teachers at Fredericksburg Academy and, through twitter, other math teachers across the world. In response, he learned students had trouble with adding and subtracting unlike fractions and factoring polynomials. After some consideration, he chose to focus his energy on creating interactive tools to help teenagers understand how to add unlike fractions.

For his learning activity, he interned with a research group at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. His goal was to learn ways to become a good mentor, to, in the future, help teenagers in math. While researching the growth methods of carbon nanotubes (coiled graphite sheets about the size of 60 atoms), he observed and took notes on how his mentors managed people and guided him through the complex material. He learned that a mentor must be clear, concise, and approachable. He has applied these observations by offering his peers help with their math and science assignments. Through helping his peers he has learned additional keys to becoming an effective mentor such as building confidence in people by frequent encouragement and acknowledgement.

Katal Math, the anticipated website for his senior exhibit, contains a curriculum on how to add and subtract unlike fractions along with other helpful tools. The way in which students learn on the site is unprecedented as the material is covered through raps, videos and text – catering to visual, audio and kinetic learners.