So yesterday I attended and delivered a workshop at the Scottish Maths Conference. I've been pretty vocal about the fact that it was the best one yet. I always enjoy the conference but this year it went to a whole new level.
Firstly our keynote speaker was Chris Smith @aap03102 - a practising teacher in Scotland. In the 30 years of the conference, he was the first teacher to deliver the keynote. What a statement about how highly Chris is thought of amongst the teaching community. His address was on point. All of the humour that you would expect from a moment with Chris and a snapshot of the calibre of teacher he is. I've said it before but I'm even more certain of it now. HE is what the Scottish Government need to pay attention to if they want to raise the profile of maths across the country.
Secondly, I delivered a workshop alongside Julie Morgan @fractionfanatic on using Twitter to enhance professional learning (slides here). It was so fun to deliver a presentation with someone who has benefited as much from Twitter as I have. And thank you so much to our special community for their support with our presentation. Hopefully we've encouraged a few more teachers to join us because there really is something quite magical about the way we push each other and the support we provide each other even in the most implicit way. I really do love our community. Speaking on a personal level, I am a better teacher for being part of the #ScotMTBOS but during the most trying time of my career the messages of support were invaluable and are probably the reason I didn't just throw in the towel.
Thirdly, I got myself along to see Chris McGrane @ChrisMcGrane84. I am a HUGE fan of Chris' and I think the work he is doing at Hillhead is one of the most exciting things in Scottish Education right now. I've been extremely lucky to spend a lot of time with Chris so was very familiar with a lot of messages that were in his presentation. That being said, hearing it again, I still got so much out of it. It's focused my attention onto different aspects of his curriculum development and will certainly be invaluable moving our own curriculum at Alness forward. If you have not had the chance to hear Chris speak, you need to rectify that as soon as possible. He will validate so many of your misgivings about current practices in schools and not just with his 'beliefs' but with hard evidence. I will make the choice to see him speak again and again.
Fourthly, I finally got the chance to not only meet Michael Allan @mrallanmaths but learn from his experience of using OneNote with his classes and also for his own organisation. I'm highly impressed with the details that have gone into his use of OneNote. His workshop was incredibly informative and I will be making changes to my practice based on his workshop. Thank you Michael.
Finally, I had the pleasure of hearing Lee Gray @mrgraymath (he apologises for the lack of an 's') and his 'Making Learning Stick' workshop. Although there were similarities between Lee and Chris' workshops, it was not a wasted 50 minutes. Lee focused a lot more on research but in a hugely engaging way. He is an incredibly passionate practitioner working in a challenging environment. His love for what he does was apparent but so was his frustration at how circumstances circumvent our hardest efforts. The honest way that he threw out so much of what is educational policy was liberating and I definitely felt sighs of relief in the room when he had the evidence to back his opinion.
My absolute favourite part of the day though was meeting so many of my fellow practitioners, particularly the #ScotMTBOS community. People who are so dedicated to our profession and maths that they would give up a Saturday to get better at delivering it, So inspiring.
Things that were clear this year: we are moving to being a more evidence driven profession; we are going to start hitting back at silly policies with no educational benefits; and we are teaching maths in the most exciting time to be a maths teacher. I am already so excited for next year.
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