There is one teacher who holds the responsibility of running the Calculus program: Brice Mertz. Mertz keeps the average pass rate for AP Calculus students at approximately 85%, and some years over 90%. He achieves this through his teaching method, perseverance, and most notably his passions.
Nationally, AP Calculus has some of the lowest pass rates. According to AP Score Distributions, from College Board, AP Calculus AB only has a 58% pass rate, making it the 8th hardest AP class. This demonstrates Calculus’ reputably challenging nature.
“My biggest passions are my family and helping others,” said Mertz. “Helping others has always been important to me. I learned the importance of helping others from my dad, who taught me very strong moral and ethical values. He insisted on only the best in behavior and etiquette, and always treating people well.”
Mertz’s reputation is known throughout the entire school. Students like him so much that he even has his own fan page on Instagram, @bricemertzfanpage. Mertz always goes above and beyond with the way he gets to know his students, understanding their own individual needs and challenges in order to successfully teach them.
“Mr. Mertz is a very helpful teacher. He takes the time to help each of us individually,” senior John Bloom said. “He even takes another step and gets to know each and every one of us, learning not only our names but the type of people we are.”
Mertz relates mathematical concepts to real world applications. Students can not only remember them easily, but also to understand them deeper. It is one of the reasons why his pass rate is so high.
“I like to teach in the way that I think. Putting mind on paper. You have to make connections,” said Mertz. “Any connection, whether it’s an acronym or what it does in real life, its real life applications.”
These connections made by Mr. Mertz allow for people to change their way of thinking. This allows for people to be able to remember many mathematical concepts, not through straight memory, but through a connection to something relevant from their own lives.
“Ever since Mertz gave us the story of the raccoons for indeterminates, they haven’t left my head,” said Andrew Delossantos. “No one can forget Mr. Caterpillar when trying to remember Euler’s Method.”
Mertz became this way through his story of high school and growing up, eventually moving here to Boerne.
“I lived in Houston for 20 years and decided to leave and move to the hill country. I was introverted, kept to myself, had a few close friends and played tennis,” said Mertz. “High school was very challenging, moving schools was rough, but having close friends and a sport helped a lot… Later on, I studied math, finance, and Spanish in college… Math was my strongest subject, it always made sense to me.”
Mertz’s biggest struggle within teaching is the time constraint it puts on him. Balancing a large workload, along with the amount of time it takes to be able to teach these complex lessons is extremely difficult for him.
“My biggest struggles with my job are the large workload, and mainly finding the time to do the things I need to do with my classes,” said Mertz. “Time is your number one enemy as a teacher. However, my best quality is patience, I’m always patient. I simply relax and see the big picture.”
There are a lot of things that students don’t know about Mr. Mertz. Aside from his main interests of music, working out, tennis, movies, and cooking, Mertz has many stories and plans for his life that not many students know.
“I’ve been to many concerts. RHCP, The Police, Journey, U2, Boston, Cheap Trick, Styx, Meatloaf are the best concerts I’ve ever seen.”
For now, Mertz plans to maintain his reputation of keeping his age top-secret. He will continue to pursue and teach math. Mertz’s plans are shorter, and his goals are more narrow, as his greatest accomplishment is already complete.
“I’m 83, well, all the freshmen in my algebra class think so.” Mertz said, “I’m going to continue teaching, and eventually begin traveling all over the world, and finally I will eventually retire. As much as I love math, my greatest passion, and my greatest accomplishment is having a wonderful family.”
