Gordon School's math team wins first place, eighth grader wins top spot overall to advance to national MathCounts competition

The Gordon School’s math team took first place in this year's Rhode Island MathCounts competition, held Saturday at CCRI. Gordon eighth grader Eric Song, of Providence, took first place in the individual ranking, making this the second year in a row that he has qualified to represent Rhode Island in the national championships in Washington DC.

Gordon had three students in the dramatic eight-person final round, included the top female in the state, Katie Chambers of Cranston, the only girl to make it to the eight-person finals. Neal Panth of Pawtucket was the highest-ranking Rhode Island sixth grader, earning twelfth place. All ten members of the Gordon team placed in the top one hundred, making this Gordon's strongest showing ever.

Over two hundred sixth, seventh and eighth grade students from over thirty Rhode Island schools participated this year, the largest competitor pool ever at the state competition. Gordon's math specialist and team coach Eric Kravitz explained, "students competing at the states are a select group, since thousands of middle school students in Rhode Island who compete in their school competitions in order to qualify for the tournament."

It was Gordon eighth grader Eric Song who earned first place, outlasting the other top seven students in the dramatic final round. He and the next three top scorers will travel to the national competition in Washington, DC in May. As the coach of the championship team, Kravitz will serve as coach for the Rhode Island representative at the nationals as well.

All ten members of Gordon's team placed in the top one hundred, and five of them were in the top twelve, including male and female students representing sixth, seventh and eighth grades. Their combined performance earned Gordon first place in team rankings.

The Gordon School is a racially diverse coeducational independent school in East Providence, Rhode Island, serving Nursery through eighth grade. Child by child, the Gordon School community cultivates successful students by inspiring joyful learning, encouraging intellectual leadership, fostering an empathic spirit and stimulating a drive for positive societal impact.

In 2012, Gordon implemented a new math curriculum, Math in Focus, and hired Eric Kravitz as the schoolwide math specialist, who now works with students and faculty fulltime to ensure that all Gordon students are supported and challenged in math. “The team’s performance this weekend reflect the depth of Gordon’s math program,” explains Head of School Ralph Wales. “Nearly half of the top finishers were Gordon students, with both boys and girls represented. Having a math specialist has been instrumental in allowing Gordon to challenge every student, and provide outstanding professional development to our faculty.”

Gordon's MathCounts team is one of a number of competitive academic opportunities offered each year. Gordon also fields a robotics team which has also earned a number of championships, and a Gordon National Geographic Geography Bee champion has gone on to compete in the global competition. A math club for third to sixth graders also meets three times a week, preparing for the Mathematical Olympiads. All four of these opportunities are offered at no cost to participants.

The Rhode Island MathCounts competition is hosted annually by the Rhode Island Society of Professional Engineers.

MathCounts is a nonprofit that "strives to engage middle school students of all ability and interest levels in fun, challenging math programs, in order to expand their academic and professional opportunities."

According to the MathCounts website, MathCounts focuses on middle schoolers is because children at this age are at a "critical juncture in which their love for mathematics must be nurtured, or their fear of mathematics must be overcome.”