A Sad Week

A very sad week for our campus. Two freshmen students, twin sisters, were struck by a car in a traffic accident on their way to school Monday. Students in my class, some of whom are band members, put this together to support the Fukui family in this very difficult time.

CMC 2011: Day Two

Despite being exhausted from long and engaging sessions from Friday, I was very
much looking forward to Saturday's sessions. The first two sessions were both by Daren Starnes, a highly respected figure in the field, and a co-author of one of my favorite statistics textbooks (yes, I know how nerdy that sounds). He was an outstanding presenter. The first session "Designing Statistics Projects to Promote Equity and Identity", Starnes introduced to the group several very interesting stats projects by his students. He has a great sense of humor and a professional attitude towards teaching. His second session "Statistics & Probability for Common Core: A 4-Step Process" was equally engaging. We again participated in a few activities together. He also shared some calculator tricks as well. It was an honor learning from such a veteran teacher.

I stayed after lunch for one more statistics session, Shirley Miranda's "Building Mathematical Identity via Statistical Projects." She's a teacher of multiple statistics sessions at her school in San Diego (oh, how I envy that position). We participated in activities and went over how to prepare students to submit project for the class. Miranda's students actually present their projects at competitions in various fields. It was uplifting seeing veteran teachers challenging their students and taking their work to showcase to arenas outside the school. In all, it was a wonderful weekend of learning for me. I strive to take back these learnings and use the strategies that I've learned with my students.

(PS: The downfall of the economy has had an effect on the Palm Springs conference. The number of attendees has dropped. I overheard a member of the organizing team that in the past, there were over 400 sessions. This year, the number of sessions has drop to the low 200's. The number of venders participating was noticeably much lower. In the past, vender booths would fill the entire center hall of the convention center. This year, I think only about 60-70% of the hall was used. The entire isles on either side of the hall had no venders.)

CMC 2011: Day One

This is my first time attending the CMC math conference in Palm Springs on a Friday. I've been very excited for this weekend. In the past, I have onlymadeday-trips on Saturdays only. This morning, I left my home before 6am. Although I arrived at the convention center an hour before the first session, the system glitch caused me to wait in line and to be a few minutes late to the first session. Nonetheless, I'm happy and thrilled to be here.

The first session by Kyle Atkin was "Using Sports and Technology". It was excellent. He gave me ideas and tools that I can use in my AP Stats class next week. We used the new TI-Nspire CX to model a few problems. The second session by Lee Kucera was "Nspired Statistics Activities", which I also enjoyed. She introduced to me the new free web-based Nspired player that can enhance student learning via hands-on activities. During the lunch break, the AP Stats group gathered to discuss a few brief topics. At the conclusion of the meeting, we drew for prizes and I was lucky to have received a new textbook. My teacher friend Tim received a new Casio graphing calculator.

The afternoon sessions continued to be engaging. I attended Jared Derksen's "AP Statistics Exam Walk-Through" where I learned about how the free response questions are scored. Finally, the last scheduled session was Ivan Cheng's "Building Confidence in Algebra by Making Sense of Algebra". I first found out about Mr. Cheng from last year's IGNITE session. I thought he was the best presenter in that 5-minute format last year. His 90 minute session today was excellent. The theory and practice linked together to give me great ideas to help my struggling Algebra I students.

I saw a poster outside of one session about an evening IGNITE session. I loved the IGNITE session last year. Speakers have 20 slides that auto-advance every 15

seconds. Their talk is over in five minutes. After dinner, I returned to the hotel and enjoyed the session tremendously from the eight brave presenter. I serendipitously ran into my friend Matt, a teacher from Baldwin Park HS, who I met at last year's IGNITE session.

IGNITE Presenters:

1) Cheng: Message to Students

2) Teague: Residue of Math

3) Derksen: Tell a Story

4) Brown: Economic Case for Equity

5) Hakansson: High Quality Math and Access of Equity

6) Asturias: Math English Language Development

7) Jacobs: Math Practices: An Iconic View

8) Meyer: When Will I Use This in the Real World

I was told that videos of these presentations will be on the Key Curriculum website.

In all, it was a great day of professional development. I'm so glad I have this learning opportunity. Time for bed, looking forward to tomorrow's sessions.

(One side story: During the lunch meeting, a highly respected statistics author commented on the new AP Statistics exam format in which multiple-choice questions will be released. The reason for the change is due to some countries not playing by the rules. He said that "the Chinese is not known for their respect for intellectual property". I respect his expertise, but I found his comment a bit unfair.)

A Touching Gift

Lauren gave me a very pleasant surprise in the middle of last week. I may have only spoken with Lauren once before. She's a nice kid, a good student, but I really would never imagine her giving me things like this. She told me that she was bored in the previous period and made this for me. I was very touched. I asked her to sign it. I'm having this laminated and will put it on my wall.