ATMNE 16 Conference Recap

I had the fortunate opportunity to attend the ATMNE (Association of Teachers of Mathematics - New England) conference again this year.  Last year was my first time attending any math-related conference, and I really had a great time and walked away with so much knowledge, tons of ideas, and a renewed passion to make math instruction better.  I was very hopeful going into this year's conference, which was hosted in Manchester, NH, my old college-days stomping grounds.

The keynote speakers lined up for this year were not as compelling as last year's, but the lineup for the workshops looked fantastic, so I was excited to be surrounded by like-minded educators talking about math for 2 days straight!

The opening keynote was by Dr. Larson, president of the NCTM.  His talk was passionate and invigorating.  He spoke about the book Principles to Actions which I've heard so much about but hadn't invested in yet.  After his talk, I purchased that book immediately and added it to my reading list.  The one big idea I took away from his keynote was that while we want student to know many different strategies, they mustn't be taught and practiced in isolation.  Students should always have the flexibility to choose to use whichever strategy they feel is most efficient for the problem at hand; whether that be a word problem in class or a real-world problem once they hit the work force.  I find that so often in the elementary classes I see, teachers are expecting students to use only the strategy they taught them that day, rather than giving them the flexibility to choose what makes the most sense to them.  This is something I am eager to read more about in the book and hopefully bring to my school in the near future.

After his keynote, the workshops began.  Here are the sessions I attended with my one sentence "take away" from each.

Family Math Night To Go!

• There are amazing games that can be adapted to all sorts of grade levels and make family math night fun and engaging!  

Making Fact Fluency Assessments Meaningful

• Ditch the mad-minutes, use the strategies we want the kids to know for all four operations during a one-on-one interview to really assess what kids know.

Desmos for elementary school

• Now I get what all the hype on Twitter is about!  This is a great website that can be used in the elementary classroom quite well once I've played around and figured it out some more!  Thanks Denis Sheeran (check out his book Instant Relevance and follow him on Twitter)

Promoting Mathematical Modeling, Problem Solving and Perseverance

• The types of problems we give our students will promote modeling and rich problem solving.  Ask WHY something makes sense!

The World is Messy: Enabling Every Student to USE math to address REAL problems

• This was more of a high-school geared talk, but I did get a better understanding of how to use real-life situations to make math tasks (rather than crazy word problems involving apples and ribbon!)

Overcoming Math Anxiety

• Math anxiety is a very real problem, it is preventable, and it is manageable.  This was probably one of my favorite sessions of the whole conference.  Cristina Post is an Educational Therapist out of Maine.  Check out her website and follow her on Twitter

Feedback is a Four-Way Street

• Effective feedback is more than a grade; it is specific, timely, personal, and offers constructive criticism.  

There were a few more keynotes sprinkled in with all these sessions.  The Thursday lunch keynote was completely irrelevant to me as it was all about high school math.  The Friday lunch keynote was by Peg Smith and she also spoke deeply about Principles to Actions.

Overall, it was a very productive conference.  In all honesty, I enjoyed last year's conference in Portland, ME a lot more than this one, but I still found this year's to be quite valuable.  I felt like last year's was a little bit more organized, the space they held it was a lot nicer, and the workshops and sessions they offered were much more beneficial than this year's.   I definitely learned a lot and am eager to share with my colleagues in the coming weeks. 

Yom Kippur #DITLife 10-12-16

Today was a very boring day in the life of this teacher!  I had the day off in observance of Yom Kippur.  

I stayed in bed until 9am; a pure luxury!  Brought the dogs for a run around a field, went to visit my husband at his work, went grocery shopping, took a nap, tutored my tutoree for an hour, made dinner, sat in the hot tub and then went to bed.  Pretty interesting day, huh?

I purposefully didn't bring my laptop home with me on Tuesday because I had a day off, and I truly wanted to enjoy the day off and not think about work.  I did pretty well with that mission until about 8:30 pm when a colleague asked for some scores for a kid from a previous year.  This wasn't a huge inconvenience for me since I have the Google Drive app installed on my phone so I just took a few minutes to look that info up and sent it over to her.  Other than than, work was the furthest thing from my mind all day, and I'm going to be honest, I loved it!

And now for the questions....

Reflection Questions

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

I didn't really make any decisions at all today!  I guess the biggest, and best, one I made was to not bring my work home with me and just enjoy my day off.  It was nice to have those days of calm and relaxation.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I am really looking forward to working with teachers more closely this year.  The literacy coach and I did a brief presentation on what a coach is and how we can help, and I'm hopeful that lots of people got something out of it and will start utilizing me more.  A challenge has been spreading myself out across the whole building.  I have a core group of teachers who love having me in their room, and I tend to always be in those rooms.  I need to branch out more and visit every room. 

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

Recently I received some pretty bad news, (see question #5) and the amount of support, caring, and concern I received from my fellow teachers was amazing. I really felt loved and part of the community.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

I think I've fallen off the train of working towards my goal.  I wanted to participate in a twitter chat at least once a month, but I'm finding that I can't stay up late enough to do that.  I'm in bed by 9pm every night.  I also wanted to make sure I was more visible in every room this year, but as I mentioned above, I'm really struggling with that.  I made myself a schedule for the week of when math was being taught in my building so I could use it as a checklist and make sure I get into every room at least once a week.  Now I just need to start utilizing it!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

My surgery that was scheduled for October 4th got cancelled because my insurance decided they didn't want to pay for it.  I was completely devastated and had to take 2 days off to fight with the insurance company and doctors and play that back-and-forth game.  I am so happy to report that I just got word it has been approved now and I have rescheduled it for November 8th!!