To the MCTM Board and Membership, Thank You

To the MCTM Board and Membership, thank you for honor of becoming an honorary life member of MCTM. I truly feel privileged that the work I have done over the past 35 years or so has affected so many. Teachers plant seeds and one never quite knows what will geminate, flower, and pass on to yet another generation.  I was a career change teacher with a background in arts administration. While accounting and grant management was part of my daily work, math was the subject I was most concerned about teaching. Math at that point in time was rules to convey. Through the guiding hand of individuals who were involved in MCTM early in my career, I began to shift my thinking. The joy and wonderment of listening to young children’s thinking around mathematical ideas became a central part of my teaching.

From generation to generation, teachers supporting teachers to move forward in helping students become solid mathematical thinkers, that is what MCTM strives for. My development as an elementary math teacher did not happen in a void. I stand on the shoulders of those who come before me, and I am honored by the time they took to mentor new teachers such as myself in the process.

Cathy Kramer (Rational Number Project and fellow MCTM honorary member) was my math education teacher in my licensing program at UW River Falls and eventually my doctoral co-advisor years later. She and my language arts professor, Leah Karnowski, introduced me to children’s thinking and the work of researcher Constance Kamii. This was my first vision that math could be taught differently than how I experienced it growing up.  John Erickson (past MCTM President and Hopkins math curriculum coordinator) allowed me to get involved with the EQUALS Minnesota/Family Math project was I was only still a student teacher and then a sub in the district. Margaret Biggerstaff who led the EQUALS Project (later MDE Assessment team) became my first significant math mentor. Sharon Stenglein, former MDE math specialist, let me join Project PRIME and later the summer Teacher Academies through the 1990s and early 2000s. Those professional development sessions helped to create a network of fellow teachers from across the state for me to draw inspiration from. We helped to spur each other on as we tried more problem-solving approaches towards instruction. They encourage membership in MCTM and NCTM as a matter of professionalism. 

It was Sharon and I, sitting together at an NCTM regional conference here in Minneapolis around 1992 that we sat and listened to the Cognitively Guided Instruction researchers and teachers who came to the conference and held several sessions. We lobbied Elizabeth Fennema to arrange CGI staff to come that next summer to launch Minnesota’s first CGI summer institute. For follow up training, Sharon needed one of the eleven of us who wished to learn more to convince a district to serve as the fiscal agent. I raised my hand and talked Hopkins into serving in that capacity. From 1993 to 2000, Hopkins served as that fiscal agent with me leading the project. I became an accidental math leader in the process and have been involved ever since. I have worked with teachers in Minnesota as far north as Talmoon, MN and as south as Blue Earth. From school districts around Fergus Falls in the west to Stillwater in the east. 

Along the way, I made friends and strong acquaintances. Individuals who were first participants in professional development sessions I led, became working collaborators, and most definitely friends. I could not be the teacher, researcher, or leader I have become without such companions along the way.  Coming first to MCTM’s conferences at Cragun’s outside Brainerd, then here in Duluth, these connections have become ever stronger. I became a member of MCTM (the year is a little uncertain) but somewhere around 1992. I have remained a paying member ever since. I encourage all of you to become sustaining members of MCTM to support its mission of fostering the next generation of our teachers. As Paul Wellstone said, “we all do better when we all do better.” Continue joining together not only for the sake of each other, but for our students. Here’s to a new generation of PreK-12 math teachers. Let’s step forward together.

Thank you for this honor. It is deeply appreciated. 

James Brickwedde, 

Hopkins Schools, 1989-2011

Hamline University, 2011-2021

Project for Elementary Mathematics, 2000-present