Joanie Funderburk
President, Colorado Council of Teachers of Mathematics
The Colorado Council of Teachers of Mathematics (CCTM) was founded in 1950, but teaching math then certainly looked different! Math teachers weren’t talking about growth mindsets, STEM, or college-readiness. Yet, 67 years later, here we are! Our students are technology “natives,” growing up in a world of cell phones, the Internet, and Google. As math educators, we have to work harder to keep up!
The CCTM Board is dedicated to ensuring that we are meeting the needs of our hardworking Colorado math teachers. We want to be sure that we are creating opportunities for educators to collaborate across the state, to come together to learn, to help one another analyze the strengths and concerns in our schools, and to provide the best possible classroom experiences in math for the students of Colorado. Yet, with all of this work, we need your help! We want to be sure that you are well-represented, and that your voice is heard to help guide our work in supporting you.
The CCTM Board is comprised of a representative from each region. Your representative’s name and email address can be found below, as well as on our website, www.cctmath.org. Please make contact to let them know what you need and want from CCTM. We appreciate your feedback and will work to make your suggestions come true, so that we can better help with what you do every day with students. Reaching out to me directly is also an option! I’d love to hear what you are doing, what is going well, and what you need in order to do your work better.
Our annual conference is another avenue by which we gather your input! Based on feedback from our 2016 annual conference, the Board is revising our 2017 fall conference. The updated conference is filled with more focus, more opportunities to engage with other members and presenters, and some new structures for making the most of your professional learning time. The 2017 conference theme is “Captiv8: Captivating and Engaging Students’ Mathematical Minds,” and we are excited to be moving the date to September 14–15 and the location to the beautiful University of Denver campus for a more academic and flexible meeting space. Keep an eye out for our call for proposals (coming in May) and conference registration, opening in late July. We would love to have you volunteer for many of the committees and jobs that help make the conference spectacular. It’s a great way to get involved at a commitment level you can be comfortable with.
As we move into the last month of the 2016–17 school year, we hope you’ll tell us how to make your CCTM membership most beneficial. Send us an email today!
This President’s Message was written for the Spring 2017 issue of the Colorado Mathematics Teacher (CMT), the CCTM professional journal.