What an amazing week I’ve spent in Exeter at the conference. I have met some truly wonderful people, who I feel lucky to call my colleagues in mathematics education. I’ll share some great highlights here.

Monday night we heard Steven Strogatz speak – author of the Calculus of Friendship and honored professor of Applied mathematics at Cornell University. What a touching story (and speaker!) about mentoring, teaching and the reciprocity of learning – I highly recommend the book to any math teacher as it truly captures why we do what we do. There was not a dry eye in the place. At one point I was able to get him to sign my book and he even inquired about what PBL was all about.

Yesterday afternoon I held a Special Interest Group for teachers and others who wanted to discuss issues related to gender equity for girls in STEM fields. I had been surprised to see that the conference director had organized it to be a double session (two hours long), but said, what the heck, we can always end early if people start leaving. Boy, was I surprised when about 20 people came at the beginning and stayed for the whole two hours. We had an amazing and passionate conversation that ranged from questions about best practices for teaching girls in the classroom to sharing personal stories and experiences from science and math education from the participants. I was most surprised to hear from the youngest women educators that biased practices still go on in academia to dissuade women from moving on in advanced degrees.

Everyone’s contributions were so important and I want to thank everyone that came to that session. I learned so much from that discussion, it might have been the highlight of the week for me. (Especially seeing the male teachers that came!) I would reiterate my statement of how important it is to share with our colleagues the message of encouraging girls and merely stating that the problem still exists out there. Creating mentoring programs in our schools is another great idea, as well as showing by role modeling that mathematical women can be strong and feminine.

This may have been the best PEA ASG conference I’ve attended and want to thank all of my own mentors that were here – so many people to be grateful for. Probably the most important is the woman after whom the conference was named – Anjs S. Greer who hired me at Exeter in 1995 – she changed my life and helped make me the educator I am today. I am forever in her debt and continue her work.

Enjoy your summer and thanks again for a great week!