Breakfast Meeting of SIGMAA TAHSM Members
Saturday, 7 August 2010
MathFest at Pittsburgh, PA
There were 10 members present at an ad hoc meeting at 8:00 AM. This was a discussion in lieu of a business meeting for the 2010 MathFest.
What sessions should be schedule for the Joint Meetings in New Orleans (January 2011) and in Lexington (MathFest 2011)?
· A contributed paper session on topics that have been skipped in many precalculus classes which could be added sometime in the high school curriculum.
· What to do after the AP exam in May in high schools (which about 12 people have responded to on a recent listserv discussion, and some topics are now posted on the TAHSM website).
· Contributed paper session on attack skills for problems that do not have model problems in the texts.
· A contributed paper session on complex analysis and trigonometry
· A contributed paper session the in the flavor of the Klein Project that William McCallum (University of Arizona) discussed at MathFest this year.
· A contributed paper session to discuss connections between topics as well as topics which are skipped in the rush to the next course (usually calculus)
These sessions would probably fit better at MathFest which would attract more of a mixture of high school and university faculty.
The contributed paper session deadline for MathFest 2011 is sometime in October 2010, so we have to decide quickly. Some of these topics will be distributed on the listserv soon for feedback in September so that we can get a session proposed in time.
What is going on with PREP sessions that would appeal to our membership?
· Dan Teague has some thoughts about a PREP course to discuss research opportunities for advanced high school students and their teachers. Steve Dunbar is willing to host such a session in Lincoln, Nebraska.
· TAHSM sponsored a PREP session in 2008 (?) in Lincoln in conjunction with the training of the US Math Olympiad students, so that teachers could be trained to better lead math teams in the AMC and AIME contests.
Other discussions.
· Mike May did an online GeoGebra workshop that was popular, and perhaps we could devise an online PREP or other session.
· We need to fight against the idea that the only valid topics are ones which lead to calculus. This is a hard discussion to have with students, college guidance offices at high schools, and parents of advanced students.
· We could look at some successful journal writing so that students would be able to publish good mathematics work. Robert Kennedy and his students have produced an inaugural issue at his school in England.
· We know that mathematics topics are connected, but the texts we use do not encourage a “connected approach” to topics.
· Doug Kuhlman teaches a linear algebra class (Phillips Andover Academy), and he might be able to share materials for people who want to use these topics.
· Susan Wildstrom (Walt Whitman HS) has some materials as well.
· Caren Diefenderfer (TAHSM chair, Hollins University) is on a strategic committee for the MAA, looking at books.
· We could produce a notes book to include some extra topics for Algebra 1, Algebra 2, geometry, and precalculus for students who could benefit from some extra topics that are usually not included, and they could broaden their training rather than just rush ahead.
We have a new website with links to topics, and we encourage members to use it and contribute to it. We are also trying to energize the TAHSM listserv. Three topics which we will use to generate some discussion in the fall:
· Topics suggested to a contributed paper session at MathFest 2011
· Brainstorming on topics that we often ignore in the high school curriculum that should be included.
· A favorite lesson, perhaps a non-standard lesson.
Caren Diefenderfer and Dave Stephens met on Thursday afternoon to discuss some business details.
· A suggestion was that all officers continue in 2011 in the office of that they hold in 2010, since we did not have an election in 2010. Caren will discuss this with chair-elect Mark Howell.
· A suggestion was that the chair serve a two-year term, instead of a one-year term so that better continuity of academic work can be planned for TAHSM. We will check the bylaws, since they may need to be changed (by vote of TAHSM members) to do this.
· Dave is currently serving as secretary-treasurer and new webmaster. We may open the secretary-treasurer position to election in the spring of 2011 for a new officer.
· The next chair-elect will come from the university faculty, since the chair position toggles between high school and university faculty.
· We need to be more alert to the deadlines for application for PREP and MathFest sessions that we will sponsor.
· More of our sessions should be at MathFest than the JMM in order to appeal to more high school members.
· Caren attended an officers meeting on Thursday.
o MAA wants SIGMAA’s to publish newsletters more frequently
o Some SIGMAA’s are good about submitting their annual reports and budgets, and some are good about newsletters, and some struggle with one or both. (We struggle with both!)
o Some SIGMAA’s plan effectively when they are together at the JMM or MathFest, and others do planning by email between meetings (The latter describes us!)
o We probably want to make a push to get an annual newsletter out.
· Dave attended a webmasters' meeting on Friday.
o Most of this session was a discussion the push that the MAA is making to have all section and SIGMAA websites be hosted at MAA (for ease of transition of webmasters, more uniformity of use of sites, sharing of MAA web personnel and webmasters ideas). TAHSM recently moved the website to MAA, so we are up to date.
o There was also a lot of discussion about PayPal and other services for registration at sectional meetings.
o Some sections use Survey Monkey to collect registration information. It is a free service (that is easy to use: Dave has used it with class evaluations!) that we could use to poll members about PREP topics or contributed sessions papers.