In a conference room at the World Trade Centre Georgetown, a group of teenagers is doing something most of their peers would consider unthinkable during the July holidays: choosing to spend a week wrestling with prime numbers, cryptography and the nature of mathematical proof, purely because they want to.
This is the Blackman-Waddell Summer Math Institute, and this year it marks a decade of pulling bright, curious minds out of their comfort zones and into the deep end of mathematical thinking.
For Jashika Jaikaran, a third-form student attending for the first time, the appeal was the unknown. “I joined this maths camp because our teachers introduced us to it. It’s my first maths camp, and I wanted to learn new things,” she said.
Coding, in particular, has her feeling both nervous and excited. “I’ve never really been too tech related, so I’m excited to learn more about that.”
That mix of nerves and eagerness is precisely what the institute — formerly known as the Queen’s College Summer Mathematics Institute — is designed to cultivate. Over the course of the week, running from July 27 to 31 at the World Trade Centre and the Centre for Local Business Development, 26 third- and fourth-form students drawn from 16 secondary schools across Guyana are being immersed in mathematics that looks nothing like their regular classroom fare.
“It’s a week of serious mathematics for secondary school students, not CXC reviews, not drill, but discovery,” explained Dr Terrence Blackman, the mathematician and professor behind the programme. “We try to get students understanding things about prime numbers, cryptography, computing, (and) nature of proof,” he said.
It is a deliberate departure from rote learning — an attempt, Blackman said, to give students the analytical tools to make sense of the numbers increasingly shaping Guyana’s economy, from oil revenues to national development statistics. In a country moving as fast as Guyana is, he argued, the ability to question and interpret numbers is no longer a niche academic skill — it is a civic one.
That philosophy extends to who gets a seat in the room. While applicants are typically assessed on school performance, recent mathematics work and career aspirations, Blackman was clear that the programme is not simply cherry-picking the highest achievers. “We are not hunting only for the child who already has the A. We’re looking for the curiosity and the willingness to work,” he said.
That distinction resonates with the students themselves. Jaeda David said she came to sharpen her problem-solving abilities and go deeper into algebra and other topics that stretch beyond what her school syllabus covers.
For Shirvane Joseph, the motivation was more personal — an itch that regular classes could never quite satisfy. “I always felt as though I had this urge to learn more as it concerns maths,” she said. Trigonometry, she admitted, has given her trouble, and number theory is another area she hopes the week will help her master.
It is that appetite — not polished report cards — that organisers say defines the spirit of the institute. And as it enters its second decade, there are ambitions to widen its reach further still, with organisers hoping to eventually draw students from every region of Guyana, ensuring that access to this kind of mathematical education is no longer determined by geography or a single school’s opportunity, but by a student’s willingness to show up and think.
