I had the opportunity to attend the AP Calculus reading for 2007. This was my sixth year reading AP Calculus exams, but this year was DIFFERENT. We went to Louisville, KY to the Kentucky International Convention Center in downtown Louisville. In past years, it had been just AP Calculus on the campus of Colorado State University. This year there was US History, Psychology, and Biology at the site, in addition to AP Calculus. So there were over 2500 high school and college teachers (instead of the only 800 Calculus teachers) at the location. This changed the dynamics of the reading, but helped me by reminding me what it feels like to be in a situation that might be viewed as overwhelming at first. This is a situation many of my students (and prospective students) may face as they come to SBU, so I share some thoughts and photos from the reading week.
Our lodging was different. Instead of staying in a college dormitory, we stayed at the Galt House on the river in downtown Louisville. We had a good view of the river, over which the sun rose (and set if I went to the elevator landing). On the river was the Belle of Louisville steamboat. There was a park area behind the hotel where you could walk closer to the river.
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Each morning I would walk on a covered pathway which connected the hotel to the convention center. On that path, I would always see the Fifth Third Bank, which as a mathematician struck me as an odd name for a bank All of our meals were in a large room which would have seated nearly 2000 people, so they staggered the meal times to serve us all. With this many folks it was often difficult to find someone you knew to eat with, but we were all in the same situation so it wasn't too awkward to just sit down with a group to eat. Since we were in Louisville, home of the Kentucky Derby, horses (both real and not real) seemed to be everywhere.
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There were three highlights of my trip. One, as it has been every year, was the informal worship service put together by some of the readers. One reason this service is special to me is that in my first year, I was very overwhelmed by the whole experience and felt it difficult to fit in. The worship service was just a special event to experience the fellowship of believers who came together to worship as believers and math professionals. The sharing of both aspects of our lives was an influential event for me. It is one reason I have tried to incorporate a Christian worship (or at least devotional) into my Math Contest Camp (which I learned in 2006 had many campers away from home for the first time, so experiencing some of the overwhelming feeling I have felt at the readings due to their size).
There was some singing and a brief devotional. Part of the devotional was a question to the readers in attendance, "Why do you teach?" Most of the responses were like mine would have been: the opportunity to influence students. As I thought about that, it occurred to me that it is more than an opportunity, it is a reality--I WILL BE INFLUENCING STUDENTS. The question is not if I do, but the question is in what way will I influence students. This is very similar to Jesus command to be witnesses--WE ARE. The only question is what kind of witnesses (what exactly are people witnessing). This is quite a challenge to me to work to be a positive influence on students.
Every year there is t-shirt designed that the readers can purchase. This year had a Louisville theme tied into the AP Calculus reading theme. It is a pencil (a Louisville Bubbler) signed by our chief reader. It is sitting on a scantron sheet where we record the marks for each exam we read. All questions are marked from 0 to 9. I sometimes think we grade ourselves on a 0-9 scale. On good days, maybe we get a 6 or 7 (lots done right and only a few mistakes). Some days we get only a 1-2. God, however, grades on a more absolute scale-are you perfect/sinless or not? The answer is that all of us have sinned and fallen short of God's expectations for us. Thankfully, Jesus has solved the sin problem by providing an answer for sin that we could not provide on our own.
In grading we are often encouraged to consider the philosophy of the problem (what was the problem really trying to find out) to decide which errors are more costly to the students than other errors. I see two ways to look at God's commands to us, that also have to do with understanding the "philosophy" of the command. We can either see the command as something God is trying to "keep from us" or see it as God protecting us from something He knows is dangerous for us. Satan tricked Adam and Eve in the garden to see the command about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as one where God was trying to "keep something from humans" rather than seeing it as God's way of protecting us. He is the designer and knows best how we should operate. We don't look at a user's manual for anything we buy and say the caution it gives is just there to take the fun out of using that equipment. We realize the caution is there for a reason-the designer knows what is best for the product and what kind of misuse will cause damage to the product.
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Another highlight of the trip, as it always is, is the camaraderie that develops in a week of working together in a group of 16 people. Your table partner and table leaders are the two you get to know best, but you get to know others around the table as well. I would have photos of that group, but with issues of test security, I didn't feel right taking any photos in the grading room (although I would have loved to get a shot of the room all 800 of us were grading in--larger than a football field or two I would say).
The final highlight of my trip was to visit with a friend from graduate school. He was the director of the singing group where my wife and I met. He had attended Southern Theological Seminary (in Louisville), so took me on a brief tour there. We also saw the gravesite of Zachary Tyler (14th president of the United States), the historic water tower, and a park along the riverfront (where we saw a barge going down the river and had a better view of the "bags" over the bridge that gave me the willies as I drove in to Louisville).
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I hope you have enjoyed my "story" of my trip to Louisville. My references to God are not meant to be statements of a theological position, but to be ideas that I find challenging as I try to integrate my faith with my discipline of mathematics as I teach at Southwest Baptist University. I hope it will give prospective students (who may find it on my webpage) and current students (who I may share it with) a view into the life and faith of this professor at SBU.
