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Students who studied advanced calculus at Punahou School last year have much to celebrate.
All 57 students who took the Advanced Placement Calculus BC exam in May earned the top score of 5.
The course is the second in the AP calculus sequence.
“We’re really happy about it,” said Janet Chang Oshiro, who heads the math department at the private school. “The teachers and the students combined to make this happen.”
The two teachers behind the magic are Susie Cooling Field, who has taught math for decades at her alma mater, and Mitch Krulewich, who joined the Punahou faculty a few years ago. He came from Maui’s Seabury Hall, where he had led his students to victory at the State Math Bowl.
The two teachers collaborated on the Calculus BC course, with Field teaching two class sections while Krulewich taught one, Oshiro said. AP courses are graded on a five-point scale. A “5” score indicates a student is “extremely well qualified” in the subject.
“Susie and Mitch are really wonderful mathematicians,” Oshiro said. “They are teaching something that they love and feel comfortable with. The feeling that I get when I am in their class is that they are conveying that enjoyment and enthusiasm to their students.”
She added, “It’s very Socratic. That one big idea is what the class discovers together, and then the kids all start practicing in their groups. Mitch and Susie are not really teaching for the test. Their idea is to teach for the deeper understanding of calculus. The students have to think of themselves as a team.”
It wasn’t the first time that perfect AP scores coincided for Calculus BC students at Punahou. The same thing happened in 2001 and 2003 while Field was teaching, Oshiro said.
