Regional Mathematics Conference

I attended the regional National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) conference in Kansas City in October. I wanted to get there for the opening speaker, who was supposed to be Danica McKellar. If you remember her, she played Winnie on the Wonder Years. Well now she is a mathematician who recently wrote a book titled Math Doesn't Suck. I actually bought this book over the summer after reading about it in Newsweek. It is a great book and I get a lot of ideas out of it. Unfortunately, she canceled at the last minute and the other opening speaker wasn't as interesting as I thought Danica would have been.

I attended various conferences for two days. Some were outstanding and some I was sorry I attended. I had to pick between a few I wanted to attend and felt I picked the wrong session at times as well. The way the conferences were spaced out, you had to create your "plan" in the morning. It was hard to adjust the plan with the sessions being different time lenghts. I did pick up some fun games to play in class, which I love to do. I also saw a hilarious speaker named Greg Tang talk about why common teaching practices are not effective.

All in all, I thought it was a terrific conference. I am also attending the National NCTM conference in Salt Lake City in April with the rest of the MS math department and am looking forward to that as well.