On September 20th, 2014, I gave a talk at NJPAECET2 at Raritan Valley Community College.
Let me just say that Barry Saide and his team did one heck of a job organizing the conference. We were fed, provided a hotel room, and most important of all, the quality of the individuals present was outstanding. I met a lot of great folks for the first time and I got to meet a lot of people with whom I had already developed a good rapport on Twitter.
The two-day venue took place at Raritan Valley Community College’s beautiful, sprawling campus. Both days were packed full of enthusiastic and motivated educators primarily from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Everyone there was willing to learn, teach, and share not just their classroom experience, but their life lessons as well.
There were somewhere between 40 to 50 hour-long presentations on Saturday! I was happy to have been one of those presenters and even more grateful that people attended my session!
The title of my talk was “Math Misery?”. I’m not sure where I got that name, but it sounded catchy. The main thesis of the talk was to discuss three types of confusions that exist with learning math. Broadly, I think that these types of confusions exist with any subject, but given that I regularly teach math, I wanted to address some math-specific issues.
We had a lively conversation during the Q & A session. We discussed some of the difficulties that (grade school) teachers face when confronted with sometimes too rigid of a course curriculum, perpetual standardized tests, parental apathy or disdain towards mathematics, perhaps their own math phobia, and so on.
The presentation slides by themselves may not say much, but if you’re curious to see some of the issues discussed, feel free to download it here. Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you’d like to know more or to arrange for me to give a similar talk at your school or district.