Suzanne at the Math Forum

When I received an invitation in October from Karen Cowe to be part of the Ignite! presentations at CMC-North 2012, I was both honored and terrified! I had seen my Math Forum colleagues prepare and present at:

NCTM 2011 – Indianapolis

NCSM 2012 – Philadelphia

I wanted to be like them and give an Ignite! talk but I didn’t want to feel the pressure … so … I kept it a secret. It really happened, though, and I have the poster to prove it:

A PDF version of my slides are here and now (about 4 months later) we are able to view the video from Key Curriculum’s YouTube channel. Suzanne Alejandre at CMC-North Ignite Fun!

And recently, I made this page to keep track of the Math Forum Ignite Talks:

http://mathforum.org/math_talk_landing_ignite.html

Last weekend I attended and presented at CMC-North in Asilomar. This is the third year that I’ve been able to go to that conference and I just love it! It’s so different from many conferences because it is in a unique location and because of that the atmosphere lends itself to relaxed conversations. Asilomar is a California state beach and has conference grounds. The California Mathematics Council (CMC) reserves space and each conference participant who stays “on grounds” is lodged in one of the blocks of rooms. It’s like Math Camp for a weekend!

Here was the view from our room:

And we encountered this “Santa Claus” deer munching on breakfast early Sunday morning as we were walking from our room to the car to load our suitcases before heading to breakfast:

Marie Hogan and I presented Getting Your Students Hooked on Noticing and Wondering on Saturday. Sunday morning we listened to Alan Schoenfeld speak on Teaching Mathematical Sense Making: Assessment and the Common Core Standards:

My friend Elizabeth DeCarli included some details about Schoenfeld’s talk in her blog post, Musings from the Beach | Sine of the Times.

Before leaving the conference, Marie and I walked along the boardwalk and a passer-by took this photo for us:

Hope to see you next year in Asilomar!