Maths Scholars Celebratory Event 2017

I was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the celebration event for this year's lucky recipients of the IMA's Mathematics Teacher Training Scholarships, and I'd like to say a few words about my experiences.


One of the freebies was a stress-ball in the shape of an apple.
Inspired!

The event was held at the rather lovely Conference Aston venue in Birmingham*, and as a speaker I was put up in an equally lovely room in the venue's hotel. The night before I met up with the event's organisers, Sophie and Vanessa, and the other speakers, Luke Bacon and Anne Fieldhouse, where there was food, a maths quiz, and one or two glasses of something or other. I love events like this, where there's a chance for the speakers to network and, perhaps even more importantly, socialise as well as the attendees.

In the morning, after a very nice breakfast, we helped to set up the sign-in desk, assembled the Shedload of Free Stuff (as mentioned by Scholar Evan in his blog post following the event), and then set up for the day's talks.

The first was from Yours Truly, in my day-job role. Those in attendance had to sit through an hour of me firing off some examples of secondary-curriculum maths topics being used in a cryptographical context, then were rewarded with a break, as much tea as their bladders could cope with, and some of those tiny Danish pastries that seemingly come from nowhere during all the best conferences. Refuelled, we made Enigma machines out of crisp tubes*.

Luke Bacon inspiring a new generation of maths teachers.

The second session was Luke's. He presented some fantastic ideas for using practical investigations to explore mathematics, and we were also treated to a case-study from a previous student on Imperial College's INSPIRE PGCE programme.

Finally, Anne, who introduced us all to a host of situations acting as springboards for really rich, open-ended exercises in mathematical thinking.

All three sessions (if I do say so myself) were engaging, inspiring, motivational, and charged with positivity and encouragement, and I am sure that the attending Scholars enjoyed the day as well as finding it useful. I found it to be a brilliant opportunity in terms of my own professional development: as a teacher-who's-not-a-teacher-any-more it can be easy to lose touch with developments in teaching and learning, and connected curricula, so to have the chance to interact with teachers at the very beginning of their careers in the classroom is a really very useful thing indeed.

If this day was any indication of the support and opportunities that these mathematics teaching scholars can expect throughout the rest of their training, then they're in very good hands indeed. I found myself wishing that such a programme had been available when I was completing my own PGCE just over ten years ago**.

I was left truly inspired, pleased that such programmes are available for new generations of maths teachers, and fully intending to keep in touch with the programme and take part in (hopefully contribute to) its activities in the future.






* Yes, really. You can do it too, if you like.
** Actually, I've just checked the Scholarship Criteria and I wouldn't have been eligible for the programme. "People with the highest degree classifications necessarily make the best teachers." - Discuss?