Foundation Update: September 2024

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The members of the foundation were pleased to support the attendees of the 2024 Spring Conference. The foundation was able to support fourteen pre-service teachers, four individual teachers and two teams by awarding grants totaling $8 755.   It was great to see the number of teachers attending both the symposium and the conference.  Our book sale, quilt raffle, wood intarsia and baskets raffles were successful due to your generous support. We raised over $1 100 in the two days.   Stay turned for what is in store for the conference in the Spring 2025!

The following are just a few of the comments shared by the Spring Conference grantees in their reports to the board:

  • I attended several sessions that were focused around Building Thinking Classrooms. This was super helpful to attend multiple sessions from actual elementary classroom teachers! I have read the book and did a 2 day training from Jessica Strom, which were great, but learning from elementary teachers was really helpful for me to. I also found that I am in the same space as many other teachers out there, who are just getting started and doing some of the components, but not all of the components. Though, the final keynote speaker reiterated many of the frameworks that are in Building Thinking Classrooms, which helps validate that is an approach that I should continue to use and explore.
  • The symposium gave me much to think about, especially how might | as the teacher change to be more supportive and encouraging to our students while at the same time holding space for rigor and high expectations. love the ICCUCARE Framework: Include Others, Be Critically Conscious, Culturally Relevant Curricula, Understand your students well, Assess Activate and build upon prior knowledge, Release control, Expect More.
  • The MCTM conference was a rejuvenating and transformative experience for my math teaching practice. I really appreciate the foundation’s work to make it possible for me to attend alongside a few of my colleagues. We were able to attend some of the sessions together and our conversations were extremely valuable to think about how we can bring the ideas back as a team.
  • It was a cool experience and some of the sessions, such as “Finding Math in all Cultures” and “Teaching Math in a World With AI” really opened my eyes to some things I had never thought about before.  My main takeaway from the conference was that spending time talking about approaches to teaching math with other math teachers will really help me develop as a teacher.

Upcoming Deadlines for Grants from MCTM & the MCTM Foundation

See all the details at  https://www.mctm.org/grants-scholarships

  • Cutler Scholarships for Middle Grade Teachers:  Are you a middle school teacher planning to take a mathematics course this year? Did you know you can get help with tuition – up to $1200!!! Deadline is Oct. 31st.
  • MCTM Teacher Incentive Grants: MCTM awards up to $1500 to Minnesota K –16 mathematics teachers to support educators desiring to implement innovative, standards-based projects in teaching and learning mathematics. Up to $1500 is available for each grant. Deadline is Oct. 31st.

Support the Foundation by Donating On-Line? 

Go the web site:https://www.mctm.org/Donate

There is an on-line Donation Form.

Changes to the Foundation Board

The board would like to publicly thank Amy Wix and Teresa Gonske for serving on the board; they will be missed. We welcome  new members, Cheryl Tucker, Margaret Williams and James Brickwedde.