AMATYC 2019 Day 1 - Morning Review
Day 1 of my first AMATYC conference was AMAZING! So many good sessions, amazing people, and great ideas.
8:00 AM - Math Pathways: Exploring the Present and Envisioning the Future
I attended the first few sessions (Helen Burn from Highline College, Amber Rust from Anne Arundel CC, and Michael Sullivan from Joliet Junior College) on their different Math Pathways implementations. Corequisite Support courses are an integral part in many Math Pathways implementations, and I thought I could glean some ideas or thoughts from these sessions. While the presenters were knowledgeable and thoughtful about their programs I didn't get much about corequisite support courses. Michael Sullivan did provide a great perspective on statistics education (TI calculators and Excel bad, Minitab and SPSS good) and some resources as well. But really, any session moderated by Helen Burn is one worth attending, she's great.
9:10 AM - Teach Your Students How To Be Students: Scaffold Everything!
Amy Hatfield and Jessica Lickeri from Columbus State CC shared their very structured way of instilling foundational skills (their prefered word for success skills or study skills). They focused on multiple tasks that aligned to support specific success skills. For example, student's attendance grade is measured in three ways; completing a sign-in sheet during the first five minutes, staying during class, and coming prepared to class by completing certain tasks. I'm really interested in trying a few of their activities, and look forward to seeing how I can integrate their tasks into what I do.
Their main focus was on
A few small interesting things were shared;
My comment on their session evaluation form sums up my current thoughts on how to go about helping students develop their foundational skills;
"I struggle with the tension between requiring students to do tasks that are meant to develop student's foundational skills and activities that allow students to choose how to grow their foundational skills on their own. In my department I have conversations with a colleague about his Taoist approach and my Confucian approach. His stresses providing choice and establishing what the consequences of those choices will be, while I want to lay out the order and structure of what students should do. Really its a question of interval vs. external pressures. "
10:20 AM - Teaching and Learning Practices for Equitable Math Student Success
Ralf Youtz from Portland CC (formerly of Clark College) presented a great session on developing strategies that would help create culturally relevant teaching. Ralf used think pair share to a great effect, and in talking to him later on in the day he mentioned the book Routines for Reasoning: Fostering Mathematical Practices in All Students. I've always been a little worried about using think pair share on faculty, but Ralf's prompts were great and he attributed them partially to this book.
The group around my table centered on reflection as a tool to help center student's experiences. One person (Nancy) used math journals in the past, another (Greg) used math biographies at the start of the class to get a better sense of who the students were, and I shared my post-class quizzes that ask students to reflect on specific questions. A question I'd like to add that I got from this session was "What was difficult about the material today? Why?"
Ralf also focused on collaborative learning and proactive teaching practices. He mentioned specific topics and prompts to help students work in groups as students don't know how to talk about math. Really, its a skill, and one math faculty should be more attentive to. While some may feel these proactive teaching practices are 'hand holding', I have no problem holding my student's hands to help them get to where they are going; connect students to academic resources, if it is important make it mandatory (resonant with my previous session), and early alerts to let students know when they are getting behind.
It is midnight and I've only gotten through 11:10 am of the first day. I might (unlikely) get through the rest of Day 1 tomorrow, and will hopefully post more over the next few days. Before I got here I organized a binder with tabs for each day so I can keep my notes somewhat ordered. I'm going to try summing up my sessions here with the help of those notes, so help me Leibniz.
8:00 AM - Math Pathways: Exploring the Present and Envisioning the Future
I attended the first few sessions (Helen Burn from Highline College, Amber Rust from Anne Arundel CC, and Michael Sullivan from Joliet Junior College) on their different Math Pathways implementations. Corequisite Support courses are an integral part in many Math Pathways implementations, and I thought I could glean some ideas or thoughts from these sessions. While the presenters were knowledgeable and thoughtful about their programs I didn't get much about corequisite support courses. Michael Sullivan did provide a great perspective on statistics education (TI calculators and Excel bad, Minitab and SPSS good) and some resources as well. But really, any session moderated by Helen Burn is one worth attending, she's great.
9:10 AM - Teach Your Students How To Be Students: Scaffold Everything!
Amy Hatfield and Jessica Lickeri from Columbus State CC shared their very structured way of instilling foundational skills (their prefered word for success skills or study skills). They focused on multiple tasks that aligned to support specific success skills. For example, student's attendance grade is measured in three ways; completing a sign-in sheet during the first five minutes, staying during class, and coming prepared to class by completing certain tasks. I'm really interested in trying a few of their activities, and look forward to seeing how I can integrate their tasks into what I do.
Their main focus was on
A few small interesting things were shared;
- Menti is a pretty lightweight polling tool that looks really promising.
- Instead of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development being focused on mathematical content, the presenters really stressed how we should think of foundational skills in the same way. I'm convinced with that argument, but I'm still on the fence as to whether requiring students to complete activities will help scaffold these skills.
- They mentioned the use of an adaptive learning environment and were a bit cagey about sharing the name but I think it was ALEKS, possibly Knewton.
- Their Spotlight on Student Success assignments seemed really good, and I'd like to see some examples of them.
- Two websites were shared PocketPoints and Flipd.
My comment on their session evaluation form sums up my current thoughts on how to go about helping students develop their foundational skills;
"I struggle with the tension between requiring students to do tasks that are meant to develop student's foundational skills and activities that allow students to choose how to grow their foundational skills on their own. In my department I have conversations with a colleague about his Taoist approach and my Confucian approach. His stresses providing choice and establishing what the consequences of those choices will be, while I want to lay out the order and structure of what students should do. Really its a question of interval vs. external pressures. "
10:20 AM - Teaching and Learning Practices for Equitable Math Student Success
Ralf Youtz from Portland CC (formerly of Clark College) presented a great session on developing strategies that would help create culturally relevant teaching. Ralf used think pair share to a great effect, and in talking to him later on in the day he mentioned the book Routines for Reasoning: Fostering Mathematical Practices in All Students. I've always been a little worried about using think pair share on faculty, but Ralf's prompts were great and he attributed them partially to this book.
The group around my table centered on reflection as a tool to help center student's experiences. One person (Nancy) used math journals in the past, another (Greg) used math biographies at the start of the class to get a better sense of who the students were, and I shared my post-class quizzes that ask students to reflect on specific questions. A question I'd like to add that I got from this session was "What was difficult about the material today? Why?"
Ralf also focused on collaborative learning and proactive teaching practices. He mentioned specific topics and prompts to help students work in groups as students don't know how to talk about math. Really, its a skill, and one math faculty should be more attentive to. While some may feel these proactive teaching practices are 'hand holding', I have no problem holding my student's hands to help them get to where they are going; connect students to academic resources, if it is important make it mandatory (resonant with my previous session), and early alerts to let students know when they are getting behind.
It is midnight and I've only gotten through 11:10 am of the first day. I might (unlikely) get through the rest of Day 1 tomorrow, and will hopefully post more over the next few days. Before I got here I organized a binder with tabs for each day so I can keep my notes somewhat ordered. I'm going to try summing up my sessions here with the help of those notes, so help me Leibniz.
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