2024 Northwest Mathematics Conference

Building Virtues, Not Just Skills

Mathematics education often focuses on skills---like memorizing procedures or factoring a quadratic. Skills are important, but a great math education should also develop mathematical virtues---such as curiosity, creativity, persistence in problem-solving, and a disposition to beauty. And in an age of AI, virtues will be even more important than skills.

Building Thinking Classroom is a practice most well know for having students working on thinking tasks, in random groups, and at vertical whiteboards. In this session, I will discuss why it is important to think beyond these practices to the closing of the lesson. In particular, I will look at the new research on the three practices that close a thinking classroom lesson—consolidation, meaningful notes, and check-your-understanding questions. These three practices are instrumental in helping students organize, structure, and formalize their learning.

Math needs a better marketing team. As math teachers, how are we marketing math so students want more math? What can we learn from social media to make math more social, exciting, and surprising? Let's talk about these questions in this session!

(Re)generating Learning for Indigenous Futurism