Memories of Terry

Guadalupe Carmona

University of Texas at San Antonio

I was fortunate to be a doctoral student in math education at Purdue University and part of a vibrant research community that very much cared about strongly connecting research and practice in ways that are transformational. I didn’t get to meet Terri until my last year of doctoral studies because she had been on sabbatical for a prolonged time. However, I did have the opportunity to learn from her and her legacy. Her ideas and articles very much shaped the elementary methods classes that were taught at Purdue. However, more prevailing were the numerous stories of people who knew her personally and attested her friendliness and hospitality; her passion for life and her enthusiasm to immerse herself in other cultures while traveling the world; her enthusiasm to interact with people and make personal connections that would last a lifetime.

Margret Hjalmarson

George Mason University

Terry cared about people and what they were thinking. This is potentially obvious from her research papers about children’s thinking about mathematics together in classrooms. But it was more obvious as someone who was a graduate student at Purdue in the late-90s-early-2000s. Her classes were taught the way I love to teach a class - a group of people, at a table, dissecting a paper and thinking through the ideas together. But, she also welcomed us into her home. I was between homes in the summer 2004 when I was graduating from Purdue and moving to Virginia. She welcomed me to stay with at her house and regularly when I came back to work with Judi Zawojewski and Heidi Diefes-Dux. Being in Terry’s orbit was the best of being in a research community that works together but also travels, eats, and has adventures together. I still have her house key. It reminds me about caring for the people we work with and wanting to learn more about what they’re thinking. It reminds me that we are a community that needs to care about one another.

Barbara Jaworski

I met Terry at the 1988 ICME conference in Budapest. She was presenting there with Erna Yackel and Paul Cobb. We interviewed them for our teacher materials at the Open University where I worked at the time. Subsequently they visited us there.

We had a common interest in classroom construction of teaching and learning within a radical constructivist perspective. In subsequent years, our perspectives changed as we recognised the importance of social dimensions of teaching and learning. It was in studies of didactics and pedagogy that we shared theory and practice as we worked with teachers to consider approaches to teaching which would encourage students’ deep engagement with mathematics.

This developed for me into a close friendship with Terry and considerable working together. We visited each other in our homes many times. In 1996, we went together to the highly significant linked pair of conferences held in Geneva to celebrate 100 years since the birth of Piaget and Vygotsky. We presented our work together with Leone Burton at the Piaget conference. We were part of a working group at PME that met over several years in the 1990s and culminated in a book about teaching development, edited with Sandy Dawson: Mathematics Teacher Education, Critical International Perspectives (Kluwer, 1999)

When the journal JMTE was instituted (in 1998) I became as associate editor with Tom Cooney as chief. He retired 4 years later and I was invited to take over as chief. I persuaded Terry to be part of our editorial team (together with Peter Sullivan and Konrad Krainer, and later Dina Tirosh). Editing a journal is a responsible and very time-consuming job; our team was excellent in all respects; we worked as a team for 8 years, and this solidified my relationship with Terry. We took turns, in the team, in writing editorials. I recall particularly one editorial written by Terry and her Colleague Betsy Berry, focusing on the recent special issue of Educational Researcher on Design Research. Terry and Betsey introduced a design-based model for teacher professional development which I have used over and over down the years in thinking about teaching development.

There were many joint occasions – I was invited by Terry to a meeting in Purdue where I met many of the US scholars in Mathematics Education at the time and was able to share perspectives on teacher and teaching development, including the use of video in classrooms -- I remember Marty Simon and Miriam Sherin.

On one of my visits we attended the Chicago jazz festival which was fantastic; many times we went to the Chicago Art Institute – also fantastic.

Terry moved to Ohio to live close to her son when she became ill. I was able to visit her there once towards the end. Her indomitable spirit was still very much alive as her body weakened. I did not see her again before she died. She remains one of the best friends and colleagues I have had.

Travis Miller

University of Indianapolis

I first met Terry when I was struggling with my future. I had begun pursuing a doctorate in mathematics in the fall of 2000, but quickly discovered that I enjoyed the teaching assistantship more than the graduate level mathematics itself. I switched to a masters in applied math with a goal of teaching at the community college level. But I completed my masters a semester before my wife finished hers. I reached out to the department of curriculum and instruction, and I ended up meeting Terry. We spoke about pedagogy and learning theories, and I decided to fill the gap semester by taking math education courses.

I first had Dick Lesh and then Megan Staples as advisors, and after their departures (while completing my dissertation proposal) I made the decision to leave and pursue a teaching career in community colleges again. But Terry intervened and did a lot of patient listening. She convinced me to continue with my work, and to toss out the stack of resumes that I had already printed to send to community colleges. My time working directly with Terry was relatively short, from March 2006 through October of 2007, and focused exclusively on my dissertation work, from pulling together the final proposal and study design through the defense. If it hadn't been for her intervention, my life would have taken a very different path. She learned about what I was trying to do, and then she directed me to writings on variation theory, which became the underpinning to my phenomenographical look at preservice elementary teachers' experiences in engaging with asynchronous online discussions as a component of their math content course. It worked out well, and I continued to use the model for several years. But as folks have learned in the last year of the pandemic, appropriately structuring and moderating the discussions is incredibly time consuming for the instructor. I remember how upset I was that Terry decided to take the summer off in 2007 to travel - postponing my defense until after starting the position I had accepted at Millersville. But when she fell ill I was so grateful that she had taken that time to enjoy life.

Erin Moss

Millersville University

My initial funding for my graduate work at Purdue University was provided by a research assistantship through the Small Group Mathematical Modeling Project. Part of my role in this project was to observe first-year engineering undergraduates work on open-ended mathematical modeling tasks in one of their classes. I was to pay attention to the social and intellectual roles that the individual students assumed during the modeling process and how they interacted with their peers. I dutifully took notes and reported back to the project team what I had seen, not anticipating that my observations would be used in any way other than as brief and mildly interesting contributions to meetings.

The Principal Investigator of the SGMM Project, Dr. Judi Zawojewski, introduced the idea of writing a book about the lessons learned from the project. I looked on, bemused by the notion that one could just decide to write a book and then actually write that book, certain that this seemingly-absurd idea only impacted the real researchers in the room. As the others discussed potential chapters, Terry volunteered that she and I could write a chapter incorporating cases from those first-year engineering class observations. She was my academic advisor at the time and had tons of experience studying group work. The task sounded tolerable to me, albeit a little scary—I could surely proofread the esteemed Dr. Wood’s chapter and catch some grammatical errors. If I were lucky, I could even have my name tacked at the end of the author list led by Terry Wood!

Some time passed. Perhaps someone had forgotten about me and the chapter. Or perhaps I was laying low, hoping to get lost in the shuffle. Regardless of the reason, on January 19^th, 2007, I sent an email to Judi including the foolish, foolish words, “As far as I know, my team is no longer writing a chapter.” Less than three months later, I sent an email to Judi reading, “I thought I’d send you what I have on the chapter so far.”

In those three months, Terry had disabused me of the notion that I would be proofreading her chapter. She would be sending me the cases that the chapter would focus on… and I would be drafting the rest of the chapter. I don’t remember the details of the conversation in her office, only the horror of this dawning realization. Terry provided excellent mentorship during the writing process, of course. She helped me get my first publication. And she also reinforced a lesson of vital importance for all of us struggling to make our way in a graduate program or a demanding career: Sometimes you don’t know how to do something, but to learn and grow, you need to do it anyway.

Eloisa Rodriguez

DelCampo Schools, Honduras

I first met sweet and loving Terry in the Fall of 05 as an approachable professor passionate about the voluntary work she had done in Honduras. I will run into her at the copy machine, and she will talk about her visits to Zamorano Campus and the training she did with some school teachers.

The following semester JoAnn Phillion mentioned to Terry that one of the teachers she had met at Zamorano (Sara) was coming to Purdue’s COE for grad studies. Terry was taking a sabbatical for six months and offered to help us, international students, out. We moved in Fall 06 to housesit for what we thought would be a semester but turned out to be the beginning of an honest and wonderful friendship.

Terry opened her heart to us, and we became her housemates and friends. Happy memories come to me when thinking about the Bluedoor house at Blueberry Lane.

After returning from her sabbatical, we started our traditional nights watching TV on the living room couch and talking for hours. She was always interested in knowing more about our Latino culture and our life goals, and she would share with us her family stories, travels, and talk about work and movies.

She was a very determined and dedicated person and professional. She would spend hours in her study- writing and preparing her lessons and publications. I remember her passion for exercise; she will go to the gym at 6 am every morning. On days that I had to TA for an early class, she would wait for me to get ready and ride to Beering.

She loved her children- Rob and Christie. She would plan her visits and surprise gifts for her twin granddaughters- Emma and Muriel. She loved when Rob would tell her stories about the twins. Hanna and Sebbie were Christie’s cats, and they lived with us as well. She loved telling Christie stories about them. We had loved being around cats, so we loved the company, and they loved being bilingual as Spanish soon became an official language at the house.

Terry wanted to be close to her children. After buying her new car, she looked for an apartment in Ohio, and we moved her out. Terry was so kind and thoughtful of our needs that she even passed on her old car to me. I went from getting rides with her to riding my bike and then driving her old car.

By then, Christie was considering moving back to the house, and Sphinx came along. We now had 3 fur loving children to watch. We joked we each had our favorite cat to pamper. We were a family already, and when the sad news came about her sickness, we started taking her to treatments and hoped for the best. God knew better and needed an angel in heaven to watch over all of us.

We will keep her dearly in our hearts forever and will never cease to thank her for being the family and support we need at our time at Purdue.

Bless your heart, dear Terry!!

Les Steffe

University of Georgia

Terry and I co-edited, "Transforming children's mathematics education", which contained the proceedings of an ICME working group which I was responsible for organizing. This was at a time when Terry was quickly emerging as an important and significant mathematics educator through her work with Paul Cobb and Erna Yackel. Her editorial contributions to the volume were enormous and I fully enjoyed working with her on the volume and beyond.

Rob Wood

I would like to thank Dr. Megan Staples and Dr. Jill Newton for imagining this event and doing the hard work of putting it together. Thank you also to Audrey King for your help behind the scenes.

The opportunity for me and, later tonight, for Terry’s granddaughters, to know her through her work and influence—related as narratives told by her colleagues—is a tremendous and unexpected gift

***

Mom encouraged imaginative play and introduced me to both language arts, and fine arts. Interesting, perhaps, given she spent a majority of her professional life studying mathematics. But, the connection to both imagination, and language are evident in her work. This is how it played out in my life:

When we were very young we loved playing on campus as a family of bunnies. And Mom had no problem hopping around campus as mother bunny.

I was a kinetic and verbal child. We lived on Russell Street in West Lafayette then. Often, she would send me to the back yard to sing to the pumpkins we planted there. She convinced me that singing to them encouraged their tendrils to grow up the chain link fence with its view on the tennis courts and the Rec center. I loved making up those songs. I found joy in the words.

In first and second grade, in 1979 and 1980, we were in Chicago. I had recurring high fevers from strep throat and she would stay up late nights reading me The Chronicles of Narnia. During the day, she researched some aspect of how we were learning at the Lab School.

Soon after, she began a tradition of gifting a ‘classic’ book for our birthday and at Christmas. This tradition has been passed down to our daughters and is received with the same laconic enthusiasm. But, Mom was undeterred. She would subtly press me to read them—The Pushcart War, young adult fiction by Robert Cormier—and, when I acquiesced and did, I would love them. In sixth grade she had me read short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was not easy. Mom liked challenging people to push their boundaries. But, she always knew where our limits were.

I finished high school and majored in math and physics at Indiana University during the time she worked with Dr. Paul Cobb and Dr. Erna Yackel. It is this work I feel I know best. What struck me and informed me as I studied mathematics were these things:

· Mom was very interested in the different pathways students found to solve problems

· In stark contrast to the pages of rote, mechanical arithmetic problems we cranked through in our youth, mom knew math was a language and mathematical solutions had a social construct that was also communal

· Because of this, she was keenly interested in how math was both similar, and different across many cultural settings

I borrowed from her in college and described physics as a poetry written in the language of mathematics. I wrote an existential defense of objective science for a philosophy midterm. I worked to continue my language and fine arts education as I finished out my majors never understanding when or why we performed the unnecessary Corpus Callosotomy that split the liberal arts college into two separate hemispheres—at least this is how it felt in the 1990s. Hopefully this has changed some.

I do not understand why we expect students to read Shakespeare, but not the Calculus. Both can lay claim to a birth of modernity and are social ideas separated by less than a century.

I would love to hear what Mom would think of this. Mom who would talk about how we ‘make meaning’. Mom who was fascinated by the prodigious arithmetic abilities of children selling souvenirs on the streets in Honduras. Children who had learned math informally, but importantly, had learned socially.

Finally, mom loved to travel. She loved to learn about new cultures at a very ground level often staying in hostels and traveling off the beaten path. She made meaning of these places and the people she met there in her own way, on her own terms. I admired her for this, for her courage.

And she loved interacting with her colleagues. She got such a charge from learning from you, from sharing her ideas and from encouraging all of us to find our own paths. Paths that both fit our personal understanding, and find a place in our communities, sometimes through congruence and sometimes through dissonance.

I look forward to these upcoming sessions and again, thank you to Dr. Staples, Dr. Newton and all of you for making this happen.

Erna Yackel

Purdue University Northwest

I first got to know Terry Wood in the late summer of 1986 when Paul Cobb asked me if I could help out with an NSF-funded project that he and Grayson Wheatley were conducting. Wheatley would be on leave for the upcoming academic year during which a classroom teaching experiment was to be conducted so more help was needed. As I learned, Terry Wood would also be helping out with the project. The project involved studying second graders’ mathematics learning in the classroom setting.

Terry and I brought complementary experiences to the project. Terry’s background was in elementary education and mine was in mathematics education with a heavy emphasis in mathematics. We both continued through the conclusion of that project and on a subsequent NSF project that involved third graders’ mathematical learning. These projects led to another, a Spencer Project that involved our Purdue team that now consisted of Cobb, Wood, and Yackel, working with a team of mathematics education researchers from the University of Bielefeld, Germany. That team consisted of Heinrich Bauersfeld, Jorg Voigt, and Goetz Krummheuer. The Spencer Project led to the publication of the book “The Emergence of Mathematical Meaning,” but more importantly led to our team becoming immersed in symbolic interactionism and how it can be used to study mathematics learning in the classroom. The impact of that was that our team now became associated with socioconstructivism whereas we had initially been associated with radical constructivism. During the third grade project, we developed ties with the Freudenthal Institute at the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. In particular, we began working closely with Koeno Gravemeijer. That led to our also becoming associated with Realistic Mathematics Education instructional design theory and Gravemeijer becoming part of our research team. My own personal close working relationship with Terry ended with the conclusion of the Spencer Project.

Throughout the above mentioned projects, Terry Wood focused her attention on the teacher and her teaching practices and over the years she continued to pursue those interests.

Judith Zawojewski

Illinois Institute of Technology

1998 Fall: Terry Wood, who I knew only by name and her work, and Dick Lesh, who had been my PhD advisor 1982-1986, began to recruit me to the mathematics education position that had opened up at Purdue University. I eventually interviewed and accepted my position there, leaving National College of Education (now National-Louis University) behind.

1999 Fall - 2000 Spring: Terry, Dick and I worked together on the mathematics education program, and they both mentored me in the “Purdue way”. While I sought out a social life, Terry and I met for dinner only 3-4 times that year. I spent a lot of social time with the Lesh’s who also reached out to her, but Terry was always busy working on a paper, data analysis, or a class preparation. She applied for sabbatical leave for the 2001-2002 academic year (Australia). Terry suggested that since I was renting a room in a professor’s house, I come to live with her in 2000-2001, and then take care of her house while she would be gone the following year.

2001-2002. Living with Terry led to a deep friendship and lots of academic discussion. Ahighlig ht was our trip to Honduras together to work with the K-8 teachers at Zamarano School outside of Tegucigalpa. Terry had been there before, and helped me prepare to work with the upper grades teachers - some of whom were’t formally trained. Nancy Waldron, the director of the school, enlightened us on ways to bring the best out of the teachers, and also made sure we experienced a good taste of the culture. We visited museums and places of women’s work,

including a little girl’s smocked dress-making shop (the wares eventually made their way to Neiman-Marcus in the USA), and a pottery making cooperative of Indigenous women using their traditional methods. Nancy became a good friend to both of us, and in later years she and Terry stayed with me in Chicago for cultural weekends.

2002-2003: I visited Terry in Melbourne, Australia for 3 weeks in December. She introduced me to the city and the mathematics education contingent (Gaye Williams, Peter Sullivan, David Clark, and many others). Terry’s work with Gaye Williams had led to their friendship in addition to their collaboration. During subsequent years Gaye and Terry stayed with me when attending conferences in Chicago. While I visited Terry in Australia, we took a week to visit Cairns and

snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. It was a fantastic experience, and special for Terry since she and her late husband dreamed visiting this reef. (His research was on the effect of wave action on reefs). We also hiked on an Aboriginal Trail in the tropical forest with a guide and were exhausted and “one with our sweat” at the close of the day. That spring, I decided to take the senior mathematics education position at Illinois Institute Technology’s then-new mathematics and science secondary education program. It was sad that as Terry returned, I left for full time

life in Chicago, but I had also just received a large grant from National Science Foundation, on which Terry was one of the Co-PIs. In my role as PI over the next 4 years, I continued my Terry visits in Lafayette on a monthly basis. We did a lot of work together on that project, which led to a book.

2004-2008: In 2004 Terry and I went to the Copenhagen ICME 10 meeting together, preceded by a week of vacation to explore Denmark. We spend most of the week up north in Skagen, where the Black and North Seas meet, and their waves literally crash against one another. (Picture of the two of us attached.) Over the four years, Terry and I also met frequently at my place in Chicago. We had season tickets to Victory Gardens (a small theater in Lincoln Park that features new playwrights) and eventually Keith Bowman (Materials Engineering Chair at

Purdue, also Co-PI on the project) joined us for the play series. Terry particularly enjoyed walking neighborhoods, visiting museums, going to plays at small store front theaters, and dining at storefront ethnic restaurants. During her last Chicago visit in early 2008, Terry awoke with yellowed eyes. She saw the doctor shortly thereafter, and received the bad news. She galvanized with a plan. She retired from Purdue, and after initial surgery, she moved to South Bend with her chemo plan to be near her son and his wife, and her 3 little granddaughters.

2008-2010: Having moved to South Bend, Terry relished the time she had with her family. A subset of her granddaughters visited her daily. Her son and his wife supported her in moving, shopping, and in many other ways. Her daughter left her job as a National Park Ranger to move into the same apartment complex to be near her mom and give her support. During my few visits, Terry was very much in charge-hiring her own help, planning “lessons” for the little girls, doing long-distance work with colleagues in Oregon, and planning the future for her

family. She also planned and directed my visits (as well as others) in a manner that gave her family a break for a few days. Terry was admirable during her last years, as she always looked for the happy places in her life, and always strived to be as independent as possible. With her loving children’s support, and that of friends and colleagues, Terry was able to live out her life continuing to engage in her work and as independently as possible. I will always admire her courage and strength, and will miss her contributions to the field, and her friendship.

Vicki Zack

I am in tears-- in sadness as well as in gratitude-- as I write this, as her death came as such a shock to me, and so I am reliving that huge sense of loss, as well as my memories of her generosity of spirit. Every time I think of her, I see her smiling face. I am very grateful that this symposium was put together in her honor. It involved a great deal of work I am sure, but is much appreciated.