This past Wednesday, I attended the sixth annual Girls Math Collaborative at the BB&N Middle School. Sure, after two and a half hours of solving gruesomely challenging, yet equally brilliant problems, this amazing group of 22 girls this past Wednesday afternoon was able to open the treasure chest. Chocolate was our little treasure.
Mr. Ken Fan, who I believed initiated this Collaboration at BB&N, handed the group of 22 a giant packet at the beginning of the session. Inside, there were around seven sheets of papers. The first sheet explained the context of this giant problem, which illustrated that a girl–whom we shall call Hunter since I can’t remember her exact name–who had traveled through to many different cities around the world in order to find the treasure chest that Mr. Fan brought with us that contained the chocolate. There was a lock on the treasure chest, and in order to open it into the treasure chest, you had to move the lock in particular directions, which symbolized the locations of the city Hunter traveled to. The remaining six pages in the packet were the problems [each page had 5 different questions], and the numerical answer to each problem gave a coordinate point, representing each city Hunter visited. In the end, all the points we had solved would be plotted on one coordinate plane, the group had to work together to find a pattern to move the lock [the one that had a slider] so that no city locations were “visited” twice, and ensure that Hunter never traveled horizontally across the coordinate plane, only right to left, up and down.
Now, this doesn’t all seem so difficult. There were 30 questions, 2.5 hours, and 22 girls solving them. Yet it proved difficult, since, as Mr. Fan pointed out, these were high school level math problems, some even college levels. I believe few middle schoolers, if any, could complete this challenge by themselves. And this leads me back to strongly implanting belief in the power of synergy.
I’ve talked about this before, with the Olympics, which I first became aware of through Sean Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. Yet this past Wednesday vigorously exercised synergy, thrusting it into full force. The group succeeded only because everyone contributed. Some problems one group struggled to solve, were solved by another. I witnessed and experienced this powerful network of girls collaborating with each other, with no one holding back. The group soon realized, after maybe half and hour of experimenting how vital it was to the team’s success that any and every piece of information was shared. Even if the information or point brought up appeared useless, we still welcomed it. It no longer became a competition between our group members to see who could solve the most problems, which is a game we frequently play in math class, but it became a team competition. It was fun, it was challenging, and it made many laugh, there were screams of excitement, and groans of impatience. And this heterogeneous mixture of emotion was very powerful for me.
It was also called a Girl’s Math Collaboration for a reason…boys couldn’t attend. This was also a powerful statement. No more ascendancy grasped solely by the male members of the community. It was empowering to experience and be a part of, especially after I’d just written about gender roles a little over a week ago.
Three days later, today, I’m reflecting on this experience again. It’s a wonder how powerful synergy is and the great places it can take you. This most certainly was an experience I will truly treasure.
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