The Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology (GSMST) is considered one of the best high schools in Georgia, but what makes it so? I believe it’s the people at GSMST — students who, via their own passion and drive, improve the school and everyone around them. These people push the school towards greatness.
One student who exemplifies this is Julius Tao, a current senior who implements these ideas in the clubs and honor societies he is a part of. As the president of Mu Alpha Theta, an honor society focused on math and math tutoring, his approach to assisting fellow students is abandoning rote memorization. Instead, he focuses on the foundations of math, to ensure understanding.
Julius takes this tactic to the math team, a math competition-based organization, where as president he changed the goal from competing just for results to competing for the sake of learning, growing and fun. He attributes the club’s rise in popularity to these changes.
Julius is an officer in the National Honor Society. Serving as the inspirationalist he inspires his peers with a message. He takes this opportunity to give humorous speeches with a moral, so people can simultaneously have a laugh and get something out of it.
How should we measure the quality of a school? I say not by its test scores, but by how its students treat one another. Julius says that one of his guiding principles is “every person, regardless of how good they are, has something unique to them. No matter how good I am, there will always be someone better. What really matters is the relationships you build with people.”
Julius is an example of the type of person with ideas that change our school for the better.
