CAMDEN - Watershed School is offering Math Matters, an after-school math class for college-bound sophomores and juniors who want to refresh and expand their math skills in preparation for classroom and testing success. The class will focus on core math concepts needed for success in high school math, college admissions, and beyond. The goals of the class are to increase recognition of problem types, strengthen skills through repetition, assemble a “toolkit” of problem-solving strategies, and increase confidence in attacking math challenges.

The class will be taught by Mary Smyth, who has been teaching all levels of math at Watershed for the past nine years. Smyth is a retired pediatrician who became interested in the math curriculum when her sons were in elementary school. She has tutored and taught in SAD 28 and the Five Town CSD, and was a Gifted and Talented instructor in RSU 13. She is also a local expert on college admission testing, and has tutored many students over the past ten years for the SAT, ACT, SAT subject tests, and AP Calculus exams.

American high school students are not as proficient in math as high school students from many other countries. The most recent international test results placed the US 35th out of 64 countries, according to the Pew Research Center.

“The redesigned SAT is going back to just two scores­­verbal skills and math. Admission test results will now emphasize math scores as half of the total instead of one score out of three,” said Smyth, in a news release. “To be able to attain at least a C in a non-­remedial college math class, students should score 530 out of 800 on the math section of the SAT, but only about 40 percent of high school students can do so, according to the College Board. This class is designed to help students get those scores up.”

For more information, visit https://sites.google.com/a/watershed­school.org/mary­smyth/math­matters