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Gulliver Prep senior Jennifer Fu is the school’s Silver Knight nominee in English and Literature. Fu created an app called Well Read that helps kids that struggle with dyslexia and reading comprehension. The app shows the kids how to break up certain words in order to better read them. And it helps with pronunciation.
It took approximately six months to code and design the app. She’s worked to place the app on the Google Play store and the Apple App Store.
The app is the result of her experience in middle school.
“I experienced obstacles with reading comprehension,” she says. “Most teachers believed it was due to my multilingual background.”
One of the assistants in the English department worked with her on reading comprehension, using the strategies depicted in the app.
“I remember how happy I was to strengthen my reading skills,” Fu says. “I was inspired to create a way to make reading and spelling easier for people who have even greater struggles than reading comprehension.”
She had students at a lower elementary school test the app for months.
“The kids would use it occasionally in class,” Fu says. “The teacher said the kids enjoyed it. It was challenging but not too overwhelming.”
She entered the app in the Congressional App Challenge and was applauded by her community.
With the success of the Well Read App behind her, in her junior year Fu developed another app called Recognized Acknowledge COVID Evidence – RACE.
“It targets an audience to create racial awareness and cite COVID evidence,” she says.
At Gulliver, Fu has been taking computer science classes since her freshman year. She’s a member of Migrant Education Program, an organization that teaches computer science to children in underprivileged areas. She was active until the pandemic hit and everything was shut down.
She enjoyed working with the students.
“I thought I was going to be doing most of the teaching,” she says. “They taught me how I could go beyond the bounds of traditional coding. It was very collaborative.”
Fu has been accepted to the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California but most of the schools wait until early April to send acceptance notices. Her plan is to major in Art History and minor in anthropology and computer science.
“I want to go on a track to become a curator that focuses on challenging mainstream beliefs and social culture,” she says. “The arts have always been an aspect in my life since I was a child.”
Art is something that she’s familiar with as her father owns an art gallery in Beijing.
She visited China often. She hopes to be able to travel there in the near future. On one of her trips, she developed presentations and lessons for a non-profit on specific strategies to teach children English.
“It was an amazing experience and opportunity where I taught classes with kids from 4-10,” she says.
At Gulliver, one of her two electives was dance. She’s a member of the Sundancers, Gulliver’s dance team.
“It’s wonderful to see the sisterly bond,” she says. “And how we’ve overcome the challenges of COVID-19 during competition season.”
Outside of school, she’s vice president for the Coral Gables Symphonettes, a community service non-profit organization for the arts.
At school, she’s president of the National English Honor Society, president of the Asian Culture Club, vice-president of the Chinese Club, an officer of Best Buddies and Zeta Omicron, a member of Cum Laude, the National Honor Society, the Science Honor Society, the Dance Honor Society, and Rho Kappa.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
