iii - Mathalon = Success Squared

When Louise Bedichek, a retired Foreign Services worker, spoke at G16's IST in January about creating interscholastic sports leagues in Guinea, she was met with a room full of skeptical education volunteers. Had she ever been to a school in the bush? Had she considered the logistics involved? The funding needed? It simply wouldn't happen.

A few months later, though, Alison and I began talking about ways to motivate our students for the upcoming Brevet and the conversation turned to Ms. Bedichek: why not stage a math competition between our schools? After all, nothing fuels motivation better than a little healthy competition.

Over the spring holiday, we mapped out a plan and a budget. Including transport to and from one village to another for eight students and one of us, and a meal with soda for each competitor, we needed 250.000FG. An e-mail and phone call with Ms. Bedichek found the funding and Mathalon was born.

With the competition set for Sunday, May 17th, we had several weeks left to prepare our students. Both Alison and I regularly held reviews, tryouts and practices, ultimately selecting two teams of four, with at least one girl on each team, for both schools. Prior to the conception of the competition, I held three reviews a week with, on a lucky day, five students in attendance. Upon the announcement of the match, however, more and more students arrived every day and I saw quiz scores skyrocket. Even before its day had come to pass, Mathalon had already proven itself a success.

The weekend before, Alison and I met for a question-writing session. Since there would be and A team match and a B team match, there would be two sets of questions, one set slightly more challenging than the other. The questions were to be written on the board, one at a time, and the teams would have five minutes to derive a response, at which point we'd collect the answers and commence with the next question. At the end of the ten, we would review the answers, award points and determine the winner. In the case of a tie, we prepared an 11th question for a sudden death round.

May 17th arrived and things could not have gone any better. My students came early and helped clean the classroom, set up the tables, and decorate the chalkboard with a big BISSIKRIMA and CISSELA on either side. Alison had prearranged a taxi deplacement and they showed up with plenty of time to spare. The students were pumped. Her students were so pumped, in fact, that several students who hadn't even made the teams hopped on their own motos and travelled the 50km between Bissikrima and Cissela on their own dime, just to watch the match.

At precisely 10am, we started. The B teams fought fiercely and, at the end of 50 minutes, the Bissikrimans proved the victors by a mark of 8 points to 6. Following a brief intermission to reset the board, the battle of the A teams took off. Going into the sixth question, Cissela commanded a strong lead, 5 to 2.5. But then they faltered. A few missed questions on their part and a few correct answers from the other team meant Bissikrima had tied it up on the penultimate question. It all came down to question #10, a word problem:

Le triple d'un nombre augmente de quatre est egal a huit fois ce nombre diminue de six. Trouvez ce nombre.
(Three times a number, increased by four, is equal to eight times this number, decreased by six. Find the number.)

Bissikrima answered 2; Cissela 2,5. The correct response: 2. Once again, Bissikrima rose to the occasion, although this time by only the closest of margins - a single point.

To the victors went the spoils - new sets of Academy geometry kits. To the rest went... the most dejected looks I've ever seen on Guinean faces. In all the preparation leading up to Mathalon, the one thing I'd never stopped to consider was the harrowing effect of defeat. Photos were taken. I stood with a big smile, my arms wrapped around students who refused to look up from the floor.

And then we ate! Once again, we had prearranged for a bowl of rice and sauce for each student and purchased cold sodas from the gas station. The students mingled and Alison and I basked in the glow of our success.

Although my students seemed down and out over their loss, it was only a day before the were back in school practicing, begging for another crack at Bissikrima. We're going to give it to them, although this time it'll be bigger and better, bringing in teams from Dabola and Dialakoro as well.

So thanks, Ms. Bedicheck, for helping me get my students to my reviews, and for helping give these kids something to look forward to.