Making the Transition: Moving Students from Success on AMC12 to AIME

Dan Teague
June 16-20, 2008
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, NE

Registration Fee: $325 by May 5, $450 after

The Mathematical Association of America has long been involved in improving the problem-solving capabilities of America's high school students. The many programs designed to help teachers prepare students for the AMC8, AMC10, and AMC12 exams have been very successful. One measure of that success is seen in the more than 13,000 students who qualified for the AIME exam last year. These students came from large and small schools, from urban, suburban, and rural schools, from schools in all areas of the country. Student talent is found everywhere. However, student success on AIME is much more localized and dependent upon the abilities of the students’ teacher-coach to prepare them for these more challenging problems. Often, the student talent is there, but the support and guidance these students need to fully utilize their talent is missing. How do we improve the abilities of our most talented students to handle these more challenging questions if they don't attend a school with experienced coaches?

We propose a one-week, intensive workshop to assist talented teachers, mathematics coaches, and collegiate faculty serving as mentors for their local high school in preparing students for the more competitive and challenging AIME exams. This PREP workshop will be a first step in addressing the level of preparation coaches need to more fully develop the mathematical talent that exists across the country. Our team of outstanding problem solvers will work intensively with teacher-coaches and collegiate mentors whose students regularly do well on AMC but struggle with the questions on the AIME. We intend to increase the pool of high school math team coaches who have the expertise to develop their students at the AIME level and, further, to assist the participants to guide their colleagues in neighboring schools in the years that follow the workshop. This workshop will create a network of knowledgeable teachers who have worked together prior to the workshop, intensively during the workshop, and who are supported to continue their cooperative interactions after the workshop both face-to-face and via the Internet.

Participants will serve as local leaders when they return home and will form part of the foundation upon which a systematic improvement in the preparation of high school faculty to work with highly talented students on mathematical challenges can be built. The MAA Special Interest Group on the Teaching of Advanced High School Mathematics (SIGMAA TAHSM) supports this workshop.

More information and an agenda are available.

Questions about PREP? Contact Olga Dixon at 202-319-8498 or odixon@maa.org.