Students write love notes to geometry
Megan Strickland
Rocco Santorno shows his math-riddled love poem to a friend.
Megan Strickland
Rocco Santorno shows his math-riddled love poem to a friend.
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Lisa Cox decorates a geometry-themed valentine at Charlo High School.
Megan Strickland
Lisa Cox decorates a geometry-themed valentine at Charlo High School.
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Rocco Santorno works on his math-riddled love poem to a friend.
Megan Strickland
Rocco Santorno works on his math-riddled love poem to a friend.
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
Megan Strickland
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CHARLO — “Love” and “math” aren’t two words Katie Revis is accustomed to putting together. The subject isn’t a favorite of the Charlo junior, but she and her classmates spent last week espousing their affection for quadrilaterals and geometric concepts.
Geometry and art teacher Sharon Hertz revived a class project where students use math-themed vocabulary to write love poems for Valentine’s Day. Hertz’s students have done the project off and on for more than 17 years.
The project helps re-enforce the importance of vocabulary words, which has been heavily emphasized in teaching at the school in recent years because of a Montana Striving Reader’s Grant, Hertz said. The $299,732 award made in 2012 supports curricula focused on improving literacy.
While it was a bit strange to write for a math class, the project was more fun that usual geometry assignments, Revis said.
“I like writing poetry,” Revis said. “It’s just kind of weird writing poetry for geometry.”
She penned a heartfelt ballad to the subject despite her dislike of it.
“Love,” Revis wrote. “How would you describe it? Like a ray; Starting at a point, then extending, forever? Or like a vertex; A place where sides of angles come together? Is it like parallel lines; Side by side on a plane? Or more like congruent angles; forever the same? For some, love is hard to explain, but to me, love is simply Geometry.”
Classmate Rocco Santorno wrote an angularly-themed note to an unspecified special lady.
“I have a hypothesis that states: You are the acutest of triangles,” Santorno wrote. “I have used deductive reasoning in my proofs. My heartbeat rises when I’m around you. But then I want to run. Because this feeling is so new. My conjectures are true. All I want is you. Girl, you are a right triangle. One right angle for me. You have turned a scalene triangle in an isosceles. From no congruent sides into two.”
Santorno took extra care to make a pink cupid’s arrow to hang the poem from, like a banner.
“It was just something different I did,” Santorno said. “Everyone else’s was just a piece of paper.”
