A math geek from the old school, Wayne Watson wasn’t ready to put away his chalkboard when he retired after teaching math for 36 years in the Philadelphia school system.
He then worked for eight years with the John Hopkins University program, helping math departments in U.S. high schools with high dropout rates find new ways to get students to click with math.
Watson moved to Lakeside seven years ago. Within a year he began tutoring students in math at the Loyola Middle School (secundaria) in San Antonio Tlayacapan (located next to Lakeside Little Theatre). Each year, he provides students access to a competitive, online math program from the United States called FirstinMath (FIM). Students work online individually, and as a team to solve different levels of math problems.
This year, 32 Loyola students in the fourth, fifth and sixth grades are participating on the FIM team. The 20 students in Haydee Rivera’s sixth-grade class have so far collectively (and correctly) solved more than 220,000 math problems online. Competing against tens of thousands of middle school students in various U.S. states, the Loyola FIM team currently ranks 47th (with 234,000 solved problems) and is the only Mexican team in the top 1,000 teams.
The two top students on the team are Kareem Jivani (ranked 12th in the United States with 95,000 solved problems) and Sara Gomez (ranked 33rd with 70,000 solved problems).
“Not bad for them working on a math site that is almost totally written in English (their second language),” said Watson.
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