Comments on: How I’m Voting in NCTM’s Upcoming Election

By: Dave Ebert

Dave Ebert — Thu, 03 Nov 2016 13:33:50 +0000

I think it’s great that you went from this statement, “A few years ago, I’d vote for any candidate who even mentioned the internet in her candidacy statement.”, to finding promising excerpts from every candidate’s statements. I look forward to finding ways to utilize the talents of our 70,000 members throughout the year.
Thank you for your support, and I hope to serve the mathematics students teachers well as a new member of the NCTM Board!

By: Brandon Dorman

Brandon Dorman — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 03:04:20 +0000

I’d love to see more work and visibility around badges (Mozilla’s OpenBadges perhaps) for example to make it easily discoverable who is an expert at Desmos, or Geogebra, or Algebra II, etc. The #MtBOS community is vast but making those people resources more discoverable is something NCTM could help facilitate.

By: Cal Armstrong

Cal Armstrong — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 02:42:46 +0000

My first criterion is if they a current or recent classroom educator; the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ leadership should be found amongst those who are actively teaching mathematics in schools, who recognize the strengths and limitations of modern classrooms, curricula, assessments and resources and can speak to the needs of teachers in the field. They have seen and felt the classroom and social environment of our students and our fellow mathematics faculty and can speak to the stressors from recent memory.
Off topic, what an incredible coup to have the Math Forum fall under the NCTM umbrella.

By: Steve Weimar

Steve Weimar — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 01:32:49 +0000

It’s exciting to me to see the interest in this aspect of the NCTM vision and building an organization that can realize it. The Math Forum, in its integration within NCTM, is focused on exactly the goal of building a professional learning community as Dan describes. Unfortunately, for legal and bureaucratic reasons, the process of separating from Drexel was long and drawn out, but we are able to proceed in earnest at this point. We are focused currently in three areas just being defined and for which we hope everyone will contribute ideas and indicate their interest in working together:

1. Ask the NCTM Community: Creating a space in which everyone in the community can effectively provide the mutual support Dan describes and make use of those interactions to build knowledge that can serve others beyond those in the mix at the moment.

2. Classroom Resource Collaboration Center: Building a digital library of the community’s favored resources that is situated in a environment that facilitates the community interacting around what makes for excellent resources and effective implementation, sharing student work, teaching and learning stories and video, and helping folks fill the gaps and improve what is available.

3. Center for Expanding Our Professional Learning: Seeking to establish continuity and productive engagement across or underneath of the professional learning that happens in conferences, institutes, journals, Twitter chats, books and blogs; that happens at various levels from the national to the local. Building an infrastructure that supports informal group formation and provides the resources and organization that enable members to carry the insights of the moment to improved practices and professional advancement and to sustain their mutual support and valuing of each other.

In truth, our real focus is simply on finding ways to value each other and to increase our ability to meet the needs of the 98% of our colleagues in teaching and research who are not now an active part of our various communities. The three areas of focus described above are hopefully good starting points for our collective conversation and collaboration. If not, we look forward to learning and figuring out better as we go.

We feel completely supported and even pressed by the NCTM Board in this effort and appreciate all efforts to ensure this continues and strengthens.