Culver City students score in Math Olympiads

It’s Saturday morning on Irving Place. Families hustle down the sidewalk, kids in oversize light blue T-shirts choke the doorway of Linwood E. Howe Elementary, and dads with cameras arrange kids shortest to tallest. In the office, teachers sharpen pencils, volunteers flip through test packets, and a pretty, 30-something lady with a headband and pigtails checks her watch.

In the cafeteria, preteen girls are bouncing around excitedly, while boys are jostling each other playfully. A few kids nibble their fingernails, but mainly, it’s the parents who look nervous. The Third Annual Linwood E. Howe Math Olympiads Tournament is about to begin.

They’ve come from every public elementary school in Culver City, as well as schools from throughout the county. These 120 fourth- and fifth-graders are “mathletes,” advanced mathematics students who compete once a month in international contests sanctioned by the Mathematics Olympiad for Elementary and Middle Schools (MOEMS). The tournament, held Saturday March 20, is the only one that takes place in in L.A. County, and is the crowning event in their five-month Olympiads season.

Each school selects its competitors differently. At the host school, Karen Burkenheim, teacher-chair for the MOEMS program, consults the other fourth- and fifth-grade -teachers about students’ test scores, their ability to work in teams and their likely performance in timed, competitive situations. The kids chosen for the math teams are not always those with the highest scores.

“Sometimes, a student may not be that good computationally, but they have reasonings skills that we can hone in on,” Burkenheim says.

The pigtailed lady bustles into the cafeteria and takes the mike. “If you can hear me clap once.  ...  If you can hear me, clap twice. ... If you can hear me, give a big round of applause for your mathletes!” she shouts, and Lin Howe principal Amy Anderson, former middle-school math teacher and cheerleader, has transformed a series of timed exams into a day of excitement.

Next, Dr. Jason Frand, a retired UCLA mathematics professor and Lin Howe’s volunteer Math Olympiads coach, takes the stage. He calls on Rosie La Briola, the now-retired principal who first invited him to work with her advanced math students. “Here at Lin Howe,” Frand says, “we start each of our school competitions with a math cheer. I’d like Ms. La Briola, who taught it to us, and all of our Lin Howe mathletes, to come up to the front.”

“Give me an M, M-A, M-A-T-H! Addition, subtraction, multiplication, division!” La Briola calls gleefully, making the mathematical symbols with fists and crossed wrists.

When parents go to wait out the Individual Round in the library,  the kids put game faces on.

“You will have 30 minutes to answer 10 questions,” Frand advises. “With so many unusual problems in such a short time, you should not expect to finish. In fact, you will know you are very good if you get any correct.”

Later, many competitors admit they found the problems hard. In fact, many of these fourth- and fifth-graders have just begun algebra.

“How can we solve this without algebra?” Anderson asks repeatedly during the lively Solutions Discussions that follow each round. For non-educators, it’s an “a-ha” moment: This is what teachers mean when they say that good math instruction is not about teaching systematic methods of solving problems but about developing critical-thinking skills.

And the kids do solve the problems — although there are no perfect scores (10 points) this year, there are multiple ties for scores of 9, 8, and 7, and two tie-breaking questions are needed to award the top four medals.

Justin Yokota of Hickory takes first, solving both problems seconds after they are read, and Peter Marcus of El Marino Language School is a close second. Kailas Pillai of Landell emerges third, and his teammates Aakarsh Aithal and Nicholas Fu must share fourth place. Among those earning  honorable mention for scoring 8 points are Farragut’s David Jeong.

The parents testing their own skills in the library find the Team Round problems even harder. And with only 20 minutes for 10 questions, the five-member school teams must divide their labor efficiently. This time, Landell takes the first-place trophy, and Yokota’s Hickory Team 15 takes second. El Marino’s Team 8 (Yuri Tateda, Kai Hakomori, Peter Marcus, Rebecca Mirvish and Sullivan Barth) wins a tie-breaker for third, leaving Torrance Chinese Team 9 and Welby Way Magnet Team 21 to share fourth place when two more tie-breaking questions end in a draw.

Anderson and Frand are as thrilled with the outcome of this year’s tournament as they might have been if Linwood Howe students had placed.

Anderson says, “Having the Math Olympiads here says that our expectations remain high at this school and in the district, and we are available to service the needs of all of our students, not just those who need intervention, but those who want and thrive on enrichment. It also lends itself to our students having a sense of pride, not only in their math skills, but also a pride for our school!”