Running a Mighty Mu Competition
by Yan Zhong, Student Delegate President, Vero Beach HS, FL

Every year, Vero Beach High School hosts a Mighty Mu competition for 4th-8th graders from around the county. Hordes of screaming little kids running around for three hours may sound like a regression back to the good ol' preschool days, but these kids actually get to do math. With the help, of course, of the Vero Beach High School Mu Alpha Theta team.

Speaking as a four-year team member, Mighty Mu takes months of effort and hard work, despite the fact that the actual event only takes place for one day. My teammates, sponsors, and I do everything: write tests, proctor, hand out awards, and somehow still manage to keep our sanity when controlling a set of youngsters who are, age-wise, closer to Sesame Street than to Harvard.

It all begins in late May of the year before a Mighty Mu competition, right after those wonderful AP exams. Mrs. Selph and Mrs. Hiller, our sponsors, dig out folders of Mighty Mu tests from previous years so that the upperclassmen can look through them and figure out what type of problems to put on next year's tests. We look for patterns- decimals, fractions, simple arithmetic for the elementary school kids, geometry, rates, and graphs for those in middle school. The difficult task of writing the actual 30-question individual test and a 12-question team round for each grade is then assigned to us. We divvy up the work into teams for each grade level of 2-3 members each, such as a 4th-grade team, a 5th-grade team, and so on. Each question takes at least 5 minutes to formulate, solve, check, and double-check, and then we have to make sure that it's the appropriate level of difficulty for each grade level. A common problem we encountered during this time was writing the same type of problem twice when my teammates and I corroborated our problems; also, some problems had to be shortened, especially since younger kids have very short attention spans!

After all the test questions are compiled and ready to go, a date for the competition is generally determined in around March; Mighty Mu competitions fall in mid-May. Mrs. Hiller and Mrs. Selph then contact the participating schools, who respond in a couple of weeks with lists of students' names who will be in the competition as well as how many teams they're bringing. Taking the total counts help to figure out the logistics of the competition, such as how many chairs we'll need in the cafeteria and how many classrooms we'll need to use for individual tests. The school administration and staff are notified that the various facilities of the Freshman Learning Center, our competition location, will be needed on a certain date.

About two or three weeks before the competition, all of the individual tests and team round questions are copied and organized; trophies and ribbons are ordered for awards; scan-trons and extra pencils are arranged; and duties for each member of the Vero Beach High School math team are assigned. An underclassman is generally placed with an upperclassman to proctor the rooms, and extra underclassmen become the runners. Upperclassmen score the team round questions and help in the scoring room. Problems with the schools and their coaches are addressed, and all of us mark the date in our planners.

Finally, the day arrives with much anticipation. My duty for the competition was to proctor a 6th grade room and then score team round for the 8th graders. I shuffle to the Freshman Learning Center over from our main campus at Vero Beach High School, watching as big yellow buses filled with faces pressed up against the windows slowly pulled to the entrance to the school. The students jump off, chattering, some still with gap-toothed smiles, others just beginning the uncomfortable onset of gawky adolescence. Math team members direct the students where to go while their coaches sign in at registration. I walk into the cold cafeteria, which is already beginning to fill up with people, and receive my packet of tests for the 6th grade individual.

Jake, my proctor partner, follows me as we head over to the classroom where kids are already beginning to file in. We smile knowingly as the cries of "Hey! Quit pushing me!" and "You did it first!" reach our ears when we enter the room. We set our supplies down on the podium and check to make sure we know where the clock is. Jake distributes the tests and scan-trons as I read the instructions, which detail exactly what the students must do. "Are there any questions?" I ask. "Good; you may begin." Jake puts the times down on the board for 15, 5, and 1 minute warnings while I open an individual test and work on it myself to make sure that we have the correct answers for that test. As the clock winds down, the kids become more restless, and they start to glance around the room; we warn them to keep their eyes on their own paper or otherwise their test would be taken away. Then, a problem: a page is missing from the tests, and the students are ready to work on that page. I race out and down to Mrs. Hiller's room, where the original copy is. A quick consultation results in making copies of that page and distributing it to all the students while we decide to add three more minutes to the time just to be fair. Finally, much to my relief (and to the relief of those students with small bladders), I call "Time!". Jake and I rush around to collect the scan-trons as the noise level in the room begins to rise again. The students stuff their tests into their backpacks and scurry out of the room, asking each other, "What did you get? I didn't get that!".

After delivering the scan-trons to Mrs. Hiller, I go to my next duty: scoring 8th grade team round in the cafeteria. I grab my calculator and sit down at a table with a scoring sheet. Two math team members are up at the microphone directing the kids to sit down while other teammates prepare the first question to pass out. Then, team round begins, and with the answer sheet, I score each answer that the 8th grade teams submit, allowing for the occasional loose interpretation of slightly unreadable handwriting. I notice that on a few of the questions, many teams got the same answer, one that was different from what was on the answer sheet. I go back to work on those problems while the teams are working and discover some errors that would affect the teams' scores. Mrs. Selph checks those problems and determines that we need to re-score two questions for the teams. I quickly compute the new scores while new submissions also come in. With stacks of paper in front of me, team round is finally called to an end and final scores are read as my teammates organize the trophies and ribbons on a table onstage.

My teammates and I are then called to the scoring room: there is a problem with the scanner, and over 80 tests need to be hand-graded. We rush over to the scoring room, a little panicked, as we realize that awards need to begin in no more than half an hour. I grab a red pen and a stack of scan-trons, take an answer sheet, and begin to work. Tests are frantically sorted as we try to weed out the highest-scoring tests first and then tally up the individual scores for the total team score. We rush over the first set of scores to the cafeteria within 20 minutes to get started on awards as the next batch is graded. After about 45 minutes, all the tests are finally graded, the team totals are added, and the scores are submitted. I walk over to the cafeteria, where my teammates are still calling names amidst the high-pitched cheering of a few hundred younger students, most of them out of their seats. Some of the students look like on the verge of tears, while others have mile-wide grins. Parents arrive to pick up their future mathematicians, signaling the end of an exciting competition. After they all leave, my fellow Vero Beach Mu Alpha Theta members and I exchange one last smile as we prepare to leave. Exhausted, we realize that although this year's Mighty Mu competition has just ended, we have one week before we have to write new tests and do it all over again.