Middle-school students take on a math camp with the help of Tulsa Public Schools' superintendent.

Summer fun and algebra are not exactly synonymous, but Tulsa Superintendent Michael Zolkoski is trying to make them equate in the minds of some local middle-school students.

Nearly 130 students from Tulsa Public Schools, surrounding districts and private schools turned out for the first day of Zolkoski's three-week Algebra Camp at Carver Middle School.

Zolkoski held class in the Carver cafeteria, which had been converted into a giant classroom with 17 dry-erase board easels lining the walls.

"Some of you may be wondering, 'Why do we have all of these boards in here?' Because we're going to all be getting up and working on the boards," Zolkoski said. "You cannot sleep in here."

He went over the camp rules, which were pretty simple: be on time, no breaks longer than 10 minutes each day, and do not forget your notebook.

Then Zolkoski launched right into a lesson on the properties of real numbers, including commutative, associative, identity and distributive.

He focused a great deal of instruction on the distributive property, explaining to the students that "80 percent of all of your problems are going to use this rule."

True to his word, he called half of the "class" up to the boards, which sent about 65 youths scrambling out of their plastic chairs for positions at the white boards.

The students were asked to demonstrate their ability to solve 8(x+5) -- the answer is 8x+40 -- and 2(6+y), which equals 12+2y.

Zolkoski quickly noticed that some of the not-so-sure students were taking cues from their neighbors' work.

"There must be no good TV on from 9 to 11 a.m. every morning," Zolkoski said, referring to the hours of the camp schedule, before giving each child a number from one to four and then a separate problem for each of the four groups.

When they were done, Zolkoski called up the second half of the class and repeated the exercise.

Jamario Holdman, who will be a sixth-grader at KIPP Tulsa College Preparatory School in August, said he came to Algebra Camp "because it was my daddy's idea."

A few tables over, Jordan Brewer, a Carver sixth-grader, had the same explanation for his coming to Algebra Camp but said he thought it would be a good way to prepare for middle school.

When the class was dismissed for its 10-minute break, William Schuller, a seventh-grader at Edison Preparatory School, looked relieved.

"So far it's boring," he said of Algebra Camp. Asked why, he explained that he already knew the distributive property.

A couple of the first students to return to their seats had a different take.

"I'm taking advanced science and math next year, so I need this to help me get ready," said Cassidy Meyers, a Union seventh-grader.

Her friend Emily Stanton seconded her enthusiasm.

"It's something to take up my time," said Stanton, a seventh-grader at Evangelistic Temple. "Otherwise, I'd probably be going on the computer or swimming. And I can do that later."

Andrea Eger 581-8470
andrea.eger@tulsaworld.com