“ A s Far As “ You Want to Go”
“I
t’s definitely fun to do math for seventy-five minutes,” says Kyle Roke ’22, reflecting on taking the American Mathematics Competition exam. And he means it. Now a senior, Kyle came to Commonwealth, in part, because he heard a rumor that the school offered a Category Theory class for a single student. (Status: confirmed.) “I don’t know that a lot of schools would have been able to offer something like that, which is really nice,” he says. “I found that totally interesting and compelling.” So Kyle applied, was accepted, and ended up placing into Calculus 1 Advanced as a freshman. There he got his first taste of mathematical proofs—though his teacher, Rob Sherry, assured him: this was just the beginning. Theoretical Calculus was where the real fun began Kyle, with his long-standing interest in math (his parents happen to be actuaries) and accelerated progress through Commonwealth’s math curriculum, may not be an average math student—but he’s not too many standard deviations from it. Most Commonwealth students progress through a math curriculum of geometry or algebra to precalculus to calculus, with the option of branching into full- and half-credit electives such Abstract Algebra, Statistics, Topology, and Axiomatic Set Theory. The
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latter two courses, currently offered to cohorts of four and eight students, respectively, are among the most advanced math electives Commonwealth offers—and they exist because students like Kyle, having already seized upon other advanced courses like Theoretical Calculus, asked for them. “That they’re willing to create new classes to help us pursue our interests is really cool,” Kyle says. “I had seen myself going in some very applied math direction. But I think now, going into pure math and research math would be really, really enjoyable, something I would really love to be able to do. And I wouldn’t have known about that as an opportunity if I hadn’t taken the classes at Commonwealth.” Keep reading to learn more about what it’s like to take and offer advanced math courses in high school, from curriculum to community, and what success in these classes really looks like…
A College-Level Curriculum
“Whatever mathematics courses a student is ready for and interested in, we can offer. We have that ability,” says Al Letarte, a ten-year veteran of Commonwealth’s math faculty. And we have “that
