AMTE’s 2018 Annual Conference in Houston was a great success! Conference Associate Vice President Susan Gay provides highlights in her Connections article, but I’d like to thank everyone who worked so hard to make the conference a success. Special thanks to opening speakers Laurie Rubel and Stephen Russell, and to our visitors from local Texas agencies. And of course, we could not have done this without the extraordinary work of our Program Committee, led by Farshid Safi, and our Conference Committee, led by Susan Gay. Next year we will be in Orlando, Florida! I hope you are thinking about your presentations, as proposals are due May 15!
Each year at the business meeting of the annual conference, the President, on behalf of the Board, presents the year’s strategic priorities. For 2018, we list two strategic priorities, which, taken together, build upon the work of the strategic priorities for 2017.
Strategic Priority 1: Educate about and advocate for the role of research and scholarship in mathematics teacher education, with a particular focus on equity, diversity, and justice.
This strategic priority builds upon last year’s focus on equity. As you know, this past year has presented many challenges to mathematics teacher education, including attacks on our colleagues and national events to which we felt we had to respond. This year we would like to be even more proactive, and by establishing this strategic priority, our AMTE Board, working closely with the Advocacy, Equity, and Research Division, will discuss stances to take so that we are able to respond more seamlessly when AMTE feels that we must.
Strategic Priority 2: Understand the commonalities and differences among policy documents across various organizations that intersect with the work of AMTE.
This strategic priority builds upon last year’s focus on disseminating our 2017 AMTE Standards for Preparing Teachers of Mathematics. At a recent meeting of the Conference Board of Mathematical Sciences (CBMS), an umbrella organization comprised of 17 national mathematics or mathematics education professional societies, we realized how many of our sibling organizations have created documents that, like AMTE’s Standards document, capture important thinking and present actions for necessary change. AMTE’s Board established a strategic priority to consider how we might work more closely with our sibling organizations to look across our current documents to inform members of the important directions called for by multiple organizations.
Appreciations
Our annual conference each year marks a bitter sweet time for AMTE, as we say good-bye to outgoing board members and committee members but we welcome new members. We welcome President-Elect Mike Steele, who shifted his position from Board Member-at-Large, and Dorothy White has graciously agreed to extend her board service one additional year to fill the position vacated by Mike. We thank and say good-bye to Vice President Christine Browning, and we welcome new Vice President Babette Benken. We also welcome newly elected Board Member-at-Large Christa Jackson.
And I would like to give a warm personal thank you to outgoing president Christine Thomas. Shadowing her during my president-elect year and working with her last year as she served as Immediate Past President was a great learning experience for me. Christine steered AMTE competently and thoughtfully. Thank you, Christine, for what you do and for who you are! You are a class act and AMTE greatly benefitted from your service.