Program
The District of Columbia Mathematical Circle (DCMC) began in the fall of 2007 with 16 eighth-grade students selected competitively from the DC public and charter schools. A new circle of students is being recruited to begin in the fall of 2008. The circle will meet at 4:00pm on Monday at the Carriage House Conference Center at the headquarters of the Mathematical Association of America, near Dupont Circle.Enrichment activities are essential for fostering the mathematical advancement of motivated and talented students in the middle grades. In the District of Columbia schools, there is not a critical mass of such students in any one school, and so the opportunities for these students are minimal. Contrast this to the affluent suburbs, where magnet schools serve to cluster together precocious students, who then blossom while working and competing together at a level appropriate for their talents.
The goals of this program are to provide a special setting for gifted young people in DC to experience the excitement, the enjoyment, the discovery of mathematical ideas. The specific objective is to alter the students’ attitudes about mathematics, show them mathematics can be done for pleasure and that they can do it. Recent studies suggest that students’ attitudes about their own abilities often are the only obstacle holding them back from achieving at high levels.
A mathematical circle is a style of enrichment activity that has its origins in the former Soviet Union and that is currently spreading in the US owing to efforts of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI) in Berkeley. The pedagogy in a mathematical circle is diametrically opposite to typical classroom pedagogies. In a mathematical circle, students experiment, conjecture, argue, persuade, prove, and generalize. The students play with ideas that stay far away from the standard curricula that they see in their regular classrooms, so the goal is not acceleration but rather enrichment. There is no testing or grading or homework.
The students in the circle will participate in the AMC-8 competition, and will be encouraged to be leaders in their schools of math clubs, MathCounts teams, and other such enrichment activities. But the circle will not be focused on training for contests. In particular, competition is de-emphasized in order to let students gain confidence and maturity with mathematics without fear or intimidation.
In November, 2006, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute sponsored a study group that traveled to Russia to visit with mathematical circles and other sorts of enrichment activities in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The purpose of this trip was to foster a new American “circles” movement in mathematics education. The DC Math Circle is just one of several math circles being launched around the US in the wake of the Russia study group.
