This past Tuesday over a hundred kids seemed to swarm the Hogarth building. In reality, elementary schools from throughout the area came to MSMS to compete in Math Superstars, a problem solving event for students in grades 1-5.

Mrs. Lauren Zarandona, the competition organizer better known as Mrs. Z, described the concept of Math Superstars.

“The goal of the contest is simple: show as many students as possible that math does not have to be only procedural. So many students finish math lessons and assignments bored or unchallenged. We want students to have access to challenging math.”

Last year was the first to see Math Superstars, and Mrs. Z helped to organize the contest not only then but this year as well.

Senior Haley Hsu was able to help with the contest last year, and as this year’s Vice President of Mu Alpha Theta – Outreach, she organized much of the program. Hsu says she was able to help with grading last year.

“This year, I wrote the questions and got to run the tournament. It was kind of like running a Mu Alpha Theta convention but for little kids. It was a lot of fun seeing the kids work together with students from other schools and grades,” Hsu said.

“I think that collaboration is a huge weakness especially for elementary kids since it’s something that is unconventional in younger years so when you get to middle school, it’s naturally incredibly awkward. Getting kids excited about math really made the contest worth it. I love throwing in riddles and logic questions because it shows kids that math isn’t just about answering questions out of a textbook,” Hsu added.

Mrs. Z hopes that MSMS can “inspire discussion and provide solution videos (made by Haley Hsu, Nayan Chawla, Vivian Van, and me) that serve as a catalyst for discussion.”

Hsu found this year to be a lot busier than the last tournament.

Last year’s tournament saw 51 participants come from six different schools (grades 3-5). This year Math Superstars had 8 schools and a total of 123 students from grades 1-5. The participating schools were Caledonia, Annunciation, Clay County public schools (four different schools), Oak Hill, Heritage, West Kemper,and McCoy Elementary (Yazoo City).

Many MSMS students were able to volunteer and help. Junior Mariat Thankachan believes that Math Superstars “was a great opportunity for us to spread our love of math to young kids who are starting to understand the power that numbers hold. By interacting with the younger students we were able to understand their perspective on math.”

Junior Maggie Rennie was also able to assist in the contest.

“It was really interesting working with the first graders. They have so much energy and I wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. But in the end it was so much fun working with them, and so cool to see how their minds worked when they were solving problems,” Rennie said.

Hsu echoed the enthusiasm. “I definitely think competitions like this are significant because it’s incredibly important to me to give back to the community. We’re given so many incredible opportunities here and I think that we should share them with the surrounding community. We had a school from Yazoo County that was willing to drive over an hour to get here to compete. I think that the impact of this is incredible,” Hsu said.

The following link is for a video on Math Superstars: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9mHKJCH5Vk