Our high school students make OUTSTANDING coaches and mentors for middle schoolers!

Last February, the top six teams at Chapter MATHCOUNTS were all mentored by high school student coaches from the Albany Area Math Circle!

And all 12 of the top individual students in the Chapter CountDown Round were members of Albany Area Math Circle's middle math circle and/or had AAMC student coaches! Nine of the 12 had worked with our student coaches before chapter, and the others joined our middle school math circle to prepare for the state contest in March.

Many of our student coaches and middle school math circle mentors from last year are pictured in our banner photo at the top of this blog and a complete list, including those not pictured can be found here.

Mentoring younger students is a great way for high school students to strengthen their own problem-solving skills and develop valuable leadership skills at the same time. It's also fun and rewarding--a win-win opportunity all around.

High school student coaches are also helping to build future AAMC members. We are excited about the prospect that many of the 8th grade students coached by our high school student coaches will join AAMC's high school math circle this fall! And some of our terrific veteran student coaches who are now high school seniors were themselves coached by former AAMC student coaches when they were in middle schoool!

Our AAMC high school student members who would like to help with coaching teams or mentoring math circle students should send an email to mathcircle@yahoo.com with the header "student coach/mentor available."

If your local middle school wants a student coach for MATHCOUNTS, please put them in touch with us, and we'll try to find a nearby high school student member to help out with coaching. Send an email to mathcircle@yahoo.com with a subject line that says "MATHCOUNTS student coach needed."

Middle school students can also join our AAMC middle school math circle, which will begin meeting on Friday afternoons from 4:00 to 5:30 in Niskayuna starting Nov 6.

We will also try to start up some smaller satellite middle school circles in other locations. Parents of interested middle schoolers can email us to look for opportunities near them. Send an email to mathcircle@yahoo.com with the subject header saying "middle school math circle info request."

All emails should describe your geographic and schedule constraints and desiderata.