I am very thankful for the financial support MCTM offers its members
to seek out professional development. I used an MCTM teacher scholarship
to help finance my trip to San Antonio in April for the NCTM Annual
Meeting & Exposition.
The adventure started with a
fabulously uneventful evening flight from Bozeman to Salt Lake City.
Things started to get exciting when David “The Admiral” Robinson walked
onto my flight from Salt Lake to San Antonio. For the record, a 7’1” man
can fit within the confines of first class seating. I practiced my sly
cell camera skills in baggage claim; unfortunately, I will not be able
to supplement my teacher salary with any lucrative deals from paparazzi
firms.
The weather in San Antonio was marvelous, as was the food
and the Riverwalk. I was happy to meet up with friends from around
Texas, including a member of my grad program cohort as well as a former
student who is now teaching in Austin. One of my favorite aspects of
travelling to national math conferences is randomly bumping into other
members of the Montana math family. Maybe the real joy is knowing that
our Montana math family is rather small and it is both joyful and
relatively easy to network with each other across our geographically
large state.
As a fellow Penn State graduate, meeting John
Urschel was a real highlight of the trip for me. (Yes, I did ask him to
sign my graphing calculator.) I enjoyed his keynote address and my
favorite quote was, “If math isn’t for you, then money probably isn’t
either.” His message inspired me to do more to encourage kids to not
just pursue their math prowess in science related fields, but that I
should encourage more students to become mathematicians.
The best individual session I attended was titled, “The Truth About Mathematical Modeling.”
I
was hoping to find a little more clarity in parsing the similarities
and differences between the CCSS Modeling conceptual category and the
CCSS Modeling math practice. What I found was that - YIKES! – seemingly
few people understand or recognize modeling in math classrooms. I’m
thankful for the work that STREAM continues to do to help Montana math
educators move toward integrating modeling into their math classrooms.
I
have wanted to visit Alamo since 1985, and you can probably guess which
Tim Burton film inspired that desire. Security Officer Limon was not
amused when I asked where the basement was, but she did graciously pose
for a photo next to the map of the Alamo grounds with me. Ahhh, we can’t
be serious all of the time, can we?
