What I Love and Will Miss about our Students

There is no doubt that Asian students have more of an aptitude for mathematics. I think it has more to do with their schooling from a young age rather than genetics, but that's just my opinion. Either way, most of my students are ahead of their American counterparts as far as age groups go. One special group of students that makes this fact very obvious is the math olympiad team, whom I have worked with for two years now. They are 8th graders who can do more math than most college freshmen in the States.

It's an understatement to say I will miss them, for obvious and multiple reasons, but I will specifically really miss their intrinsic motivation to do math of all things. Just now the bell rang to release students from their last hour of the day to go to their dorms to change for activity. Michael, one of my math olympiads from the fall, came right over from art class (next door) only moments after the ringing of the bell left my ears. His purpose? "Do you have any hard math questions for me, Teacher?"

He does this from time to time; I don't teach him and never have, I just coached him in math olympiad in the fall of both of my years here. He just simply loves math so he comes and visits me sometimes. I don't have normal math problems just laying around my classroom, so I generally give him SAT math prep tests. And you know what, he does well on them. I love these kids' natural math ability!

Now we'll just see how he does with the special right triangles SAT sheet I just gave him!