Our school year ends early, we graduate the day before Memorial Day here. So, I have had some time to unwind AND to look ahead to next year. I’ve been thinking about my new Discrete Math text, problem sets for my AP Calculus BC class (thanks to inspiration from Lisa Winer (@lisaqt314)), and my upcoming trip to TMC where I will be hosting a brief session to discuss how to develop communities similar to our MTBoS back at home.
Recently, I received not one, not two, but THREE pieces of good news that has happily distracted me a bit from thinking about the fall.
Last summer I led a session at the Pennsylvania Teachers of Mathematics summer conference. I gave it the dramatic title Escaping the Tyranny of the Textbook and it is essentially my love note to the MTBoS community. The goal of the presentation was to have any participants in the session leave the room feeling empowered to write their own curriculum or to learn better how to crowdsource curriculum that is tailored for their classrooms. I was pretty happy with it but I know it needs to be punched up. What better motivation to improve something than to put yourself in a public position where you need to be up in front of people all over again? So, I sent proposals to two upcoming conferences and I learned in the past few weeks that I was accepted to both of them! I will be presenting at the fall conference of the Pennsylvania Association of Independent Schools in October and I will be presenting at ECET2NJPA in September. I am flattered that my proposal was approved by each of these conferences and I am excited to meet some new folks to expand my circle of colleagues even more.
Our school started a STEM initiative shortly after I arrived here in 2010. The first director of the program has decided to step down in large part due to other responsibilities that she has since taken on. She has put the program on firm footing and when he school announced this opening they committed to having a director and two associate directors. I received the great news last week that I will be one of the associate directors of the program. All of our freshman take a STEM class that was designed by the program director and some of our students. They created some lovely iBooks that are still works in progress and that I feel a kinship to since I created our text for Geometry in a similar fashion. We have been hosting guest speakers, alumni, panels of regional experts to discuss items of interest. It’s an exciting program and I am looking forward to being part of the team for the next year. If any of you have advice regarding possible directions for STEM programming, please share here in the comments or over at twitter where I am found @mrdardy
You’re a rock star! 🙂
Totally kind words, thanks Jen!