Meet the country's best math teacher

Every year, the Mathematical Association of America hands out Haimo Awards to three extraordinary college or university teachers. And this year, one of the winners is Mills College professor Zvezdelina Stankova.

Professor Stankova is from Bulgaria. She says when she came to the U.S., she was shocked by the diluted American approach to math in schools. So, for over a decade, now, she’s been working to change that. She helped launch the Berkeley Math Circle – a weekly program currently serving 160 middle and high school students. And, to prepare kids for international competitions, she co-founded the Bay Area Mathematics Olympiad.

KALW’s Hana Baba visited with Professor Stankova in her office at Mills College in Oakland.

*     *     *

HANA BABA: When did you know you were good at math? When was the first time you thought, “This is something I like, and this is something I can do?”

ZVEZDELINA STANKOVA: I have very distinct memories from fifth grade, when I thought that I was horrible. And it was a very dramatic experience for me to be put in front of the whole class, given a problem and left there for the whole period trying to do it and failing. So at the end of the class I was crying; the teacher came to me and said, “I will not give you the grade you deserve if you come next time and explain the solution of the problem to me.” So that was the turning point, the switch for me. I went home, I talked to my dad, he helped me. It was a system of two equations with two unknowns that I had to construct, and then solve. And I went back to my teacher the next day, explain to her the solution, and I asked her, “Would you allow me to join your math circle?” This is an after school program. And she surely did. And three months after that I won the local math Olympiad with a perfect score. To my surprise, to my classmates’ surprise, to my parents’ surprise. And from then on, I knew I had something inside me.

BABA: So explain to me what a math circle is, because you are continuing in that here in the United States. What’s a math circle?

STANKOVA: This is an after school program for kids, ages from K-12, not all in the same room, just at different levels, perhaps from one to two hours, depending on the age of the kids. The problems that we discuss are non-trivial, they will be on the even high school curriculum, and most math majors even don’t get to know this kind of material. So it is very motivating, it is puzzling to the kids, they would love to know how to solve these problems, and for that they have to work hard to understand the theory behind it, so that’s why they founded the math circle.

BABA: So can you give me an example? For example, right now, a fifth grader, what level would they be learning or exploring in a math circle?

STANKOVA: There are many different topics that we teach and discuss at the different levels of the math circle.

For a fifth grader, the problems that we pose to them are very, very different from what they will encounter in school. For instance, you have a river, you have a farmer and a cow on one side of the river. The farmer is four kilometers from the river, the cow is six kilometers. If they go straight to the river, they will be six kilometers apart. So it’s you know, a kind of geometric situation. Unfortunately the cow has broken it’s leg. It wants to drink water, it’s a very hot day, but can’t get to the river. So the farmer has to walk to the river, dip his bucket, and then walk back to the cow. Well there are many possible ways of doing that. Which one is the shortest? And prove that your answer is correct.

So for a fifth grader, this problem involves a whole new array of thinking. They have to do experimenting, they have to conjecture where this “best, most efficient” place is, and then they have to prove that the answer is correct. That anything else is worse than what they have found.

BABA: So then when that fifth grader then goes back to class in his regular school, won’t they then find the mathematics they are taking at school boring now, and not challenging anymore?

STANKOVA: The fact that the kids are at the math circle usually means precisely that. That they are several years ahead of the class material, of the regular class material. And that they don’t find it challenging or motivating, and even teachers who know about their own level, who appreciate these kids, they can not all of a sudden scaffold their lectures, their classes into ten different levels, and address the needs of these very advanced kids. And that’s why they come to the circle. This is probably the only place where they can get what they’re looking for.

BABA: So you helped cofound the Bay Area Mathematical Olympiad.  Tell me about starting that up.

STANKOVA: The idea is that in the United States there is only one truly Olympiad-type competition. It is the last round of the U.S. Math Olympiad, where students sit for two days in a row, four-and-a-half hours each day, with only three problems each day. So in other words, nine hours, for only six problems.

So when I came here to the United States, I realized that only about 250 or 300 students in the United States get to take this round. And the United States is much larger than Bulgaria. In Bulgaria, about 30,000 students took Olympiads of that sort. So that was a big discrepancy. And I thought maybe we can organize a local Olympiad, where the students here in the Bay Area can take it, and can get a feel for what it is to really sit down for an extended period of time over just a few problems. They are usually between 300 and 400 kids just from the Bay Area who take the test and they are students all the way from Seattle and LA who participate in math circles and to whom we give the possibility of also taking the test.

BABA: I want to see how you feel about standardized tests. Do you think standardized tests are a good measure of a student’s good academic level and how much weight do you give test scores? Let’s get it all out in the open.

STANKOVA: I feel very negative about them. I can give you an example. When I came to the United States I was given a test to determine my level of mathematics, so that they would tell me which course in math I would take in college. I was given the multiple choice in differential equations. I had never solved a single differential equation before. I knew what they were, I knew the definition, but I had no clue how to solve them.  Well guess what, on the multiple choice test all I had to do was take each answer, plug it in and calculate, and whichever one turned out to be correct – check mark. So I passed the test. And they told me, “You know differential equations, move on.” And I said, “no, I don’t.”

This test reflects nothing whatsoever about knowledge of the subject area. So I went on my own into differential equations in my senior year in college. So a multiple choice test is perhaps a good measure if you are grading very young students who don’t yet know how to read or write very well. But if you want to measure the level of understanding, the depth of this understanding of someone, then you have to make them write down their thoughts. And here comes one misunderstanding about mathematics: mathematics is not just about numbers. It’s actually about words and concepts and putting them together and making relationships between different ideas. It is very hard to grade essay/proof-type tests. And so I can see the difficulty, it’s a very practical issue. You have to do multiple choice tests to millions of kids, if you want to have a quick turnaround of results.

But this is one more reason why we created the Bay Area Math Olympiad, because it is a different type of test. And if such contest is given in every region in America, if there are enthusiasts to do this, then every kid will be able to experience something which is non-standardized and in which they would really be able to show their depth and originality.