While a lot of young people—and even adults—tend to shy away from math, the students on Howard Bishop Middle School’s award-winning math teams thrive on the subject.

“They love it,” said math teacher Judith Masuda. “They have a need to know about math, and they are the ones who go above and beyond to work on it.”

“I like that there’s just one answer,” said 6^th-grader Luke Hall. “In poetry, you can’t tell if it’s good or not, but in math you know when you’ve got it right and when you’ve got it wrong.”

“I really like math,” said classmate Christopher Berry. “My favorite thing is how the formulas and numbers relate to each other.”

That passion for numbers has helped several of Bishop’s students earn statewide recognition. Eighth-grader Jon Claus was one of just four students in the state to earn a perfect score in the recent Florida Math League Contest, which pits math students throughout the state against each other on a rigorous, timed test. The school’s sixth-grade team, which includes Hall, Berry, Kim Mueller, Unmil Patel and Max Curtis, recently took first place in the contest out of 85 schools.

“I was happy about how we did,” said Patel. “Everybody worked really hard for it.”

The students spent many hours preparing for the competition, including time spent after school working on math problems. While it’s something they all enjoy, they agree that extra time spent on math skills can help other students become more comfortable with a subject they may find intimidating.

“It’s like doing anything else, if you practice you get better at it,” said Claus.

Thanks to the time they put into their math studies, the students have sometimes come up with methods of solving problems that their teacher hadn’t thought of.

“After 32 years of teaching math, the students are still giving me ideas that I didn’t see beforehand,” said Masuda. “They’ll share an approach with me and I end up using and sharing it.”

“I like how all the different formulas get you to one simple answer and with one formula you can do several different things,” said Mueller.

Howard Bishop has a long tradition of math excellence, including strong performances in other competitions such as MathCounts. Although preparing for and participating in those competitions can take up a lot of their spare time, the students say they enjoy the challenge.

“I like competing,” said Curtis. “You get to see how well you do against other good math students and see what level you’re on.”

“They’re challenged with so many ideas and concepts that go way beyond the regular curriculum,” said Masuda. “They just eat it up.”