Bowie Math Teachers Thank PTSA
Last spring, Bowie PTSA board voted to help fund travel expenses to allow nine teachers to attend CAMT, The Conference for Advancement of Mathematics Teaching, in July 2018. The board also directed funds to buy additional calculators for classrooms. Here are highlights from CAMT from our wonderful math teachers.
August 2018
Dear Bowie PTSA,
Thank you so much for your contribution that allowed nine Bowie Math teachers to attend CAMT, The Conference for the Advancement of Mathematics Teaching, this past summer. We spent three days in Houston at the Convention Center participating in a multitude of sessions. We learned about technology, mindset, classroom culture, curriculum, grading, online teaching resources and more! We enjoyed meeting and reconnecting with educators from other schools and learning more of the current best practices in math education.
Our OnRamps Statistics teacher, Dana Stiles, found the First Five Days session valuable. She said they “talked about the importance of teaching students’ perspective, how to appropriately research online and the difference between compassion and empathy.” Mrs. Stiles came away with great ideas to incorporate in her Statistics lessons.
There was a session where teachers learned how to code on the TI 84 calculator. This was Kristen Cayer Rodriguez’s favorite session. Coding is such a relevant and useful skill, and being able to do it on a calculator makes it accessible to all students.
Jamie Lankes, our math department chair, enjoyed a session on making boxes out of greeting cards. She found the task engaging and the mathematics discussion was amazing! She plans on sharing the activity with the Geometry team to use as a vocabulary review.
Each night we went to dinner and debriefed on all the cool things we had seen and heard. We brainstormed how we could implement new ideas in our classrooms this year. We got excited about sharing what we learned with our peers in the math department. The conference was a perfect opportunity to recharge and get inspired for the new year! Our math instructional coach, Cindi Carroll, said, “I really appreciated the time to network with other instructional coaches around the state. The time with colleagues as well as the sessions we attended made it worth the investment.”
Thanks again for your commitment to all children and the Bowie learning community!
Sincerely,
Jamie Lankes
Natasha Weissmiller
Deepthi Ramachandran
Sophie Lloyd
Cindi Carroll
Caren Garza
Janet Gummerman
Kristen Rodriguez
Dana Stiles
