Sanchia Bennett has a talent for crunching numbers.

She has an even greater talent for relating to others, especially children.

Bennett is a senior math major at Troy University and, for two-plus years, she has volunteered as a tutor at the Troy Public Library.

Her ability to teach, her love of children and her unselfishness with her time and talents vaulted her above a group of outstanding and dedicated tutors as recipient of the 2008 Troy Public Library Outstanding Tutor of the Year Award.

Teresa Colvin, children’s librarian, said Bennett is one of the most dedicated tutors that she has ever had.

“She has the ability to relate to children in a special and unique way,” Colvin said. “They fall in love with her and work extremely hard for her. The grades of her ‘children’ soar and even other children are amazed. Parents call the library to ask about her. She is the most requested tutor that I have ever had.”

Karen Bullard, TPL assistant director, has observed Bennett at “work” and said she does an excellent job.

“Sanchia is a delight to know,” Bullard said. “The way she works with children is amazing. She will make a difference in the world.”

Bennett graciously and modestly accepted the award and expressed sincere appreciation for it.

“I always try to do my best and I hope that I do,” the Bay Minette native said. “Teaching was not always my first career choice. I thought that I wanted to be an accountant. But, I had a chance to tutor at the university and at the library and just fell in love with teaching.”

Bennett said that she regards teaching as more of a calling than a career.

Being able to relate to children is a gift and Colvin said Bennett definitely has “the gift.”

Bennett’s approach to tutoring and teaching is that children must see the relevance of math if they are to understand and master it.

“What I try to do is find something that the children are interested in and then find a way to relate that to math,” she said. “If a student is interested in baseball, I relate math to baseball and that’s not hard to do. But there are students that have interests that don’t readily relate to math and so I have to do a lot of research to find ways to do that. But that’s what I love to do.”

Bennett graduates in May and plans to return to Bay Minette to teach.

Her future plans include teaching on the college level and Troy University would be her college of choice.