“You’re going to have to go home.”
“What, the time has already gone?!”
That’s a pupil reluctant to leave at the end of a maths circle at St Mark’s Academy in south London. It’s not a reaction you’d expect from a pupil after an hour of maths. But then, maths circles are much more than that.
Ms Okereke, the mentor leading maths circles at St Mark’s Academy, knew that before she even started. A maths teacher, mathematical communicator and co-host of the Maths Appeal podcast, Susan had been part of the Axiom Maths academic advisory committee, supporting the programme from the outside. But seeing it work with her own pupils was something different. “I knew the positives,” she says. “So it was like, okay, this is something I think is super important. Let’s try and make it happen and it’s been really nice to experience it with them.”
What she didn’t expect was how much the maths circle would reveal about pupils she thought she already knew. “Some of the quiet ones are the ones who are sharing the most information – being quite adventurous with their thinking,” she reflects. “You don’t necessarily get to explore that in a classroom of 32.”
For pupils, maths circles feel different to lessons. “When it comes to our maths lessons, it’s often just – they tell us what to do, and we just follow that,” says one pupil. “But with Axiom Maths, it’s more like using what you know. I find that quite nice.”
“I thought it was going to be much more serious and less interactive. But it’s actually fun and we get to talk a lot more than I thought we would.” shares another.
Ms Okereke challenges negative views of maths. Across every channel she works in, her content is accessible, memorable and confidence building. Maths circles let her take that further.
“The whole point of it is to be different from a maths classroom,” shares Ms Okereke. “I’m able to think a bit more broadly about maths and really allow them to explore ideas, get it wrong and also be a bit silly!”
Another pupil describes the moment a problem finally clicks: “I might feel a bit defeated, because the question feels impossible. And then something will click and it’ll be like a big light bulb moment.”
That experience of grappling with something difficult and emerging on the other side is something Ms Okereke values deeply. “Some problems from the curriculum are quite mind-augmenting,” she says. “Even with a maths degree, I’d think: that’s quite cool. And we don’t always have the capacity to do that in a classroom.”
The confidence built in the maths circle hasn’t stayed there. “If I get it wrong in class now, I’m confident enough to answer again,” one pupil says. This is exactly what Axiom Maths aims to build.
“I’m really glad we did this for them,” says Ms Okereke.
So are we.