Ninth-grader Shmuel was born in Israel after his family made Aliyah from Ethiopia in 1990. One of six siblings, Shmuel was having a hard time in school, particularly in his physics class. He joined SPACE after being told that it might help him improve his grades—and it certainly proved worth doing! When Shmuel first entered the program he was averaging 40s and 60s in physics—he now regularly scores in the 80s and 90s. Shmuel finds SPACE so helpful because it’s an environment where he feels comfortable asking questions, thanks to the sympathetic teachers and small class sizes. Shmuel loves learning new things, and dreams of one day attending university and becoming a lawyer.