Jefferson Village School sixth grader Jonathan Bernier, who is among the top mathletes of his age nationwide, stands with JVS math teacher and math team coach Barbara Williams the morning of Friday, March 21. Bernier achieved a perfect score on every math team problem set this season. The feat made him one of the top performers of the Continental Mathematics League, in which students from across the country participate. (Molly Rains photo)
When it comes to solving tough problems, just getting started is the most important part, according to sixth grade Jefferson Village School mathlete Jonathan Bernier.
“If you just try to do it, you are going to do better than if you don’t,” he said on Friday, March 21, seated at a desk in JVS math teacher Barbara Williams’ classroom.
Bernier has always enjoyed the challenge of math, he said. This year, his commitment to the subject paid off in a big way: Bernier earned a season-perfect score for his performance on the Jefferson Village School math team. To do so, Bernier successfully completed five out-of-the-box math tests at meets throughout the season without a single misstep.
“I’ve had… hundreds of kids participate, and I’ve only had one other student have a perfect season in my whole career. This is a big deal,” Williams said at a meeting of the Jefferson School Committee on March 11, where Bernier’s parents, Jefferson School Committee Chair Danielle Bernier and committee member Andy Bernier, listened with pride.
This year, Bernier was the only student at JVS to earn a season perfect score – and one of only three students in the math league’s New England region, and 36 sixth graders nationwide, to earn a season perfect score.
“I was proud of myself, because I did not expect to get all of them right,” Bernier said.
But Bernier’s tenacity and ability to think creatively saw him through the season successfully, Williams said.
“Perseverance is a huge piece of this, definitely,” she said.
That is because each math meet brings a new challenge, Williams said. At every competition – of which there are five throughout the season – students are given a set of problems that are different than what they are used to encountering in the classroom.
“The math itself is easy, but then the way the question is laid out on the paper makes it hard,” Bernier said. The challenge, he said, then becomes “knowing what it’s asking and how to do it.”
This kind of task represents what Bernier has always enjoyed about math, he said March 21.
“Math has always been my favorite subject,” he said. “I just find it fun, definitely, and hard to the brain. I guess I would call it, like, a puzzler.”
Last year was Bernier’s first season competing with the Jefferson Village School math team, which competes in the Continental Mathematics League. The league contains schools from all over the United States, with over 100 typically competing at each grade level, Williams said.
“There could be well over 1,000 students competing at each grade level,” she said – making the fact that Bernier was one of just 36 sixth grade students to achieve a perfect score in the league even more exciting, she added.
Math skills are important, Bernier said, because they can be helpful in many different situations.
“A lot of things that show up in math show up in life as well … There’s a lot of math everywhere,” Bernier said. He gave examples from needing to budget at the grocery store to needing math skills for the study of other subjects, like science.
While the subject can be intimidating for some, Bernier said it was important to just try, get started, and then learn from your mistakes along the way.
In the classroom and at math team practice, Bernier is a natural leader and plays an important role in helping coach his peers, Williams said.
“Listening to things from your peers is sometimes a lot easier,” Bernier said.
Those skills may continue to come in handy: Bernier sometimes considers becoming a math teacher, he said. However, Bernier has many other talents and interests, he said, and is also interested in continuing to pursue theater and dancing.
Currently, Bernier is in rehearsal to play the lead role in Boothbay Region YMCA’s Y-Arts production of “Guys and Dolls,” which will show at the Lincoln Theater this summer.
