Newsletter #90     WaToToM the Fifth

WaToToM the Fifth is now history, and a very nice blend of the familiar and the new it was. A spot of review for a start, then I'll launch into current events. WaToToM stands for Washington Teachers of Teachers of Mathematics. Up to now the term has tended to refer entirely to a recurrent event -- the annual gathering of the aforementioned teachers -- but time and a lot of really good conversations have had their impact, and we seems to be coalescing into a genuine Group, one moreover which should probably develop some Presence. More about that later. This time, as always before and as far ahead as our imaginations will encompass, we gathered at the Sleeping Lady Conference Center near Leavenworth, cashing in most gratefully on their standing offer to send a charter bus for any group rash enough to contract to cross the mountains in the winter months. The familiar began with crunchy snow and a sky full of highly polished stars, and continued with a sociable dinner with food so phenomenal that we never get to the point of taking it for granted. More familiarity as we adjourned to our meeting cabin to sit around a wood stove, and paired up with someone we didn't know to introduce each other. But therein lay an element that was of a level of novelty and excellence such as to merit a digression. I'll devote a whole paragraph to the digression, because it involves dropping back a bit in time. A couple of weeks ago I found myself simultaneously stewing about two separate situations: one was that the registrations for WaToToM, although definitely sufficiently numerous and varied to guarantee a good conversation, were still looking to fall short of covering the deposit for Sleeping Lady so kindly provided last summer by the Green River Community College Foundation. The other was that as project director for the PFF (Preparing Future Faculty) grant I had failed to come up with enough off-campus experiences for our graduate students, and was at serious risk of finishing the already extended grant period with an inordinate amount of cash left over. The two gear wheels, quietly spinning away in separate chunks of my mind, finally managed to mesh, and I registered the fact that a wonderful collection of graduate students have already demonstrated a huge interest in K-12 issues by joining Loyce Adams's GK-12 project, and would both benefit from and provide a strong new voice for the WaToToM conversation. With help and some e-mail pyrotechnics I connected with 6 of them, and was very much pleased throughout the week-end that I had done so.

Saturday morning was mostly very new, though with one sadly familiar element. For the fourth time someone from OSPI (the Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction) had, to our great pleasure, accepted our invitation. The first two times the invitee came and gave very welcome comments and answers despite manifest poor health. Last time and this, illness struck enough in advance to make the decision easier -- and our invitees stayed home. We therefore waited in some trepidation for our morning speakers, who had been lined up though OSPI. Fortunately, they were local, and the bad health vibes seem to be restricted to Olympia. Both arrived, and we had an information-packed presentation that precisely met our needs. There had been a growing feeling during the past two WaToToMs that we should begin to formulate our opinion of what should be required of teachers, with an eye to coordinating our efforts to improve things. But the process of finding common ground just felt too gelatinous because none of us knew which of the requirements at our respective institutions were state-mandated and which weren't. Enter Pat Trefry and Joyce Stevens of the North Central ESD (which for current purposes can be regarded as a branch office of the OSPI.) Firmly positioned in mid-trench, they were able to present us with a barrage of up-to-the-minute information and to field the really impressive array of questions that got tossed at them. My own level of ignorance was such that I mostly clutched my copy of their hand-out and promised myself that I could check things out later, but a few things stuck with me. One was that there are three varieties of certification, of which the most ancient is the most desirable, in having absolutely no strings attached, the intermediate one is what most teachers now have, and requires some upkeep in the form of continuing education credits and the one which has just come into effect will require what looks like rather elaborate upkeep. Another was a lovely question from the floor: "To keep up my current certification I have to get credit for some courses. Does it count if I teach them?" [Answer: "Once"!]

That used up most of the morning and all of our mental acuity, so we headed out for lunch and a long, brain-renewing break (cross-country skiing, snow-shoeing, hot-tubbing -- whatever!) Then we re-assembled for what always turns out to be an exciting session -- our teacher panel. We've been cycling through the levels and were back at high school, so we had four teachers with us under the auspices of the (about to expire) CCML grant. A fifth panel member joined them -- Pat Trefry, while talking with us in the morning, had observed that we had urban and suburban schools represented, but not rural, which is very much her bailiwick, and accordingly she very kindly returned. I can never manage to re-trace those discussions, but I can recognize entirely the ending state, with those of us from colleges and universities saying "Wow!" and with all of us feeling much more connected. It's an absolutely crucial element in keeping WaToToM grounded. After dinner we settled around the wood stove again and swapped news. It felt nice to be talking largely about updates to familiar scenes, when only four years ago the session consisted of "Er,..., so what does your university's program consist of?" Nothing spectacular and unexpected burst across the horizon, but there are good things going on in lots of places around the state, which is a very heartening thing to know.

This morning came crunch time: now that we have talked a lot and learned a lot and talked a lot more, what is it that we feel most strongly about, and what should we do about it? Ideas careened around a while, but landed pretty solidly on one particular point: endorsements. In the current scheme of things, all certificates must have at least one endorsement, indicating a particular strength or concentration. At the secondary (i.e.high school) level, they must also have a secondary (i.e. supporting) endorsement, and the options for both endorsements are largely what one would expect -- English, History, Mathematics, Science,... , all geared to secondary level students. At the elementary level what is available that is specifically geared to the level is an elementary endorsement. Period. So a bright, mathematically inclined student who prepares to teach elementary school by taking every available course to enrich his or her mathematical teaching capacity has no official reward for this admirable pursuit, and there is no documentation to the school system of what a valuable resource they have available. That, by acclaim, became our Official Issue. And what to do about it? Send a letter to OSPI. And who should write the letter? A slightly loaded pause, and then Steve Kinholt's colleagues unanimously volunteered him and he didn't duck. He will produce a draft which we will all check over (wonderful thing, e-mail!) and then send on stationery bearing our official WaToToM logo. Which will have the dual effect of expressing a strongly and unanimously held opinion and of establishing ourselves as a presence, or a voice, or a presence with a voice. Something, in any case, that it is time we did. Five years' worth of conversations have brought us a long way.

Flushed with a sense of achievement, we then bent our minds briefly to the future, and promised ourselves that we would A) search diligently for possible sources of funding, B) think equally diligently about further people to invite (or possibly to twist the arms of) and C) start brooding about how to push for enough separation of middle school level so that we have an opportunity to prepare folks for it -- already established as our central theme for next year.

Owing to fantastic good fortune with our timing (or possibly to the fact that the approach of a Sleeping Lady meal makes people less discursive) we polished off that discussion at just the right time to cruise down to the dining hall for one last lovely lunch. Then, pointing our vehicles towards all sorts of different destinations around the state, we took our departures and went home with them.

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