{"id":571,"date":"2015-11-14T08:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-14T13:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/?p=571"},"modified":"2015-11-14T18:39:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-14T23:39:54","slug":"airport-thoughts-after-nctmregionals-mlps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/2015\/11\/14\/airport-thoughts-after-nctmregionals-mlps\/","title":{"rendered":"Airport Thoughts after #NCTMRegionals MLPS"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s quite unsettling flying back to NYC,\u00a0 less than 24 hours after another major world city faced an unimaginably horrific terrorist attack. I’ve found that in the\u00a0darkness behind the worst acts of humanity is always\u00a0outmatched by the brilliance of humanity’s acts of compassion. My thoughts, and surely the thoughts of everyone leaving the Minneapolis conference center, are with the people in Paris.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

My faith in humanity happens to be at\u00a0a local maximum after the #NCTMregional in Minneapolis, which hit me with a fire hose of hugs, math, and possibility for 3 days. I feel like I’m still dripping with\u00a0excitement\u00a0after spending the time\u00a0volunteering with the program committee, giving my first ever NCTM talk, and helping out at the MTBoS booth. It seems unlikely that I’ll be able to squeeze all of the cool stuff that happened into a blog post, but it seems like it’d be fun to try. So here goes!<\/span><\/p>\n

Program committee-ing<\/span><\/p>\n

My work on the program committee began a year or so go, and so was one of the longest projects that I ever took part in. Robert Kaplinsky wrote an\u00a0<\/span>article<\/span><\/a>\u00a0that summed up the initial meeting. Following that planning,\u00a0meeting we did our best to recruit a really solid group of speakers that could provide an interesting array of talks. Surprisingly,\u00a0I only see talks in snippets, as my role as program committee kept me running from room to room during\u00a0the sessions. It was slightly frustrating\u00a0to miss talks that are\u00a0mere feet away, but it was great to help the event run smoothly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

During the event my role was to monitor every talk happening along one hallway of the center.\u00a0For each talk I would greet the presenter, thank them for coming, help get them set up, and watch to see if the room would hit capacity. When rooms hit capacity, that meant telling people they couldn’t view it, even if “it’s the only other K-12,” and \u00a0“the other one I wanted is closed,” and “I can just stand in the back, no one will notice!” Later on I would stop by each session to count their participants. \u00a0This is where I could sit down to enjoy a little of the session, but then I’d have to come back to each room to ensure they don’t go long, when the next\u00a0presenter should be setting up (assuming the next presenter actually shows up).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Volunteering as a program committee member\u00a0let me peer behind the\u00a0curtain and learn how these conferences function. Planning for these took place many years ago,\u00a0and by the time the conference started,\u00a0the NCTM event planners already had the difficult work finished. Signs for all of the talks were organized by\u00a0room before they left NCTM’s Virginia headquarters.\u00a0Being so throughly\u00a0planning meant they\u00a0were free to\u00a0quickly respond to MTBoS emergencies,\u00a0and made it so\u00a0the\u00a0program committee could focus solely on the presentation content. It made\u00a0me think about\u00a0how many logistical things I should try to relive from the shoulders of my staff and students.<\/span><\/p>\n

Were I to do it again, I would have tried\u00a0to see all of the people who I invited to talk. It might have been nice to provide a little personal hello, but\u00a0with all the running around I didn’t have time.\u00a0I especially want to thank everybody on my Strand who may not have been able to show up for whatever reason, but was still there in spirit:David Wees, Megan Schmidt, Justin Aion, Bowen Kerins, Rafranz Davis, Christopher Danielson, Justin Lanier, Chris Hunter, and anyone else who I may be temporarily forgetting, thank you all!<\/p>\n

Delivering a session<\/p>\n

Funny story. So Megan and I are getting ready for\u00a0our talk. There are already about 6 or so people there while we do some last minute powerpoint-ing. All of a sudden Matt Larson president elect walks in through the back door. He doesn’t sit down, instead he walks right up to us and says “Hi Carl, Hi Megan!” I was thinking “oh my gosh, he knows our names! He thinks we’re special delicate flowers!” (Yes, I know our\u00a0names were in the program book, the sign outside, and lanyards around our neck, but don’t rain on my pararde). He said he was going to watch but wanted us to know he would be leaving early.\u00a0Hopefully I didn’t appear\u00a0visibly shaken\u00a0when we got started.<\/p>\n

The talk went great, but\u00a0was largely a blur. I know that the participants totally got into our statistics activities, and we had good conversation about the data as well.\u00a0Here are the slides and the handout that we prepared.<\/p>\n

Helping at the MTBoS Booth
\nI was helping set up the booth when it hit me. The NCTM was changing fast. It was less than a year ago that this booth was just an blog post, but\u00a0the conference staff was\u00a0speaking about it as a if it was going to be a fixture. Only a few months ago it was running off of Tina’s phone, and now they provided complimentary Wi-Fi and electricity\u00a0which\u00a0costs other vendors hundreds of dollars. It’s a small but clear sign that the NCTM is listening, and that more ideas may be brought to life in the near future. Don’t worry about things getting high-brow too soon. While the booth has corporate sponsorship, it still had the shower curtain from my hotel room serving as a projector screen.<\/p>\n

The booth still provided was a super interactive time with activities from @mathonastick in addition to others. Visitors could play with the pattern machine,\u00a0tiling turtles<\/a>, and some of Andrew Stadel’s Estimation 180 activities.\u00a0\u00a0I wasn’t able to get down there for a whole shift, but I did get to sneak them\u00a0leftover snacks from the NCTM break room. I could hang out for a little while and\u00a0chat with whoever, including a teacher whose school\u00a0has a “Trap Team.” It also got to hangout at the Math Forum booth\/NCTM booth and chat with them, and contribute to the giant business card menger sponge.<\/p>\n

This trip was exactly what I needed to help me get this fall started and I was lucky to have the chance to help NCTM (Thanks Fred!). Did I miss anything? Let me know in the comments below…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s quite unsettling flying back to NYC,\u00a0 less than 24 hours after another major world city faced an unimaginably horrific terrorist attack. I’ve found that in the\u00a0darkness behind the worst acts of humanity is always\u00a0outmatched by the brilliance of humanity’s acts of compassion. My thoughts, and surely the thoughts of everyone leaving the Minneapolis conference […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xz6U-9d","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":581,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571\/revisions\/581"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.coast2coast.me\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}