Core Knowledge Conference

Catherine Johnson said...

oh my gosh --- how did the Core Knowledge conference go???

Last week was the National Core Knowledge Conference in Anaheim. My company shared a booth with singaporemath.com, so I didn't attend many of the sessions. (However I got plenty of feedback from teachers.)

I had high expectations for this conference. First off, there hasn't been a national conference since February, 2007 and secondly, I saw Liping Ma was presenting. (Yeah!!)

Attendance was around 1500, That's about half the attendance of the D.C. conference in 2007. We had less than 100 people visit the booth in the three days the exhibition hall was open. That's ok, they were people who were truly interested in Singapore Math. Liping Ma's session had 30 or so attendees, less than ours and she's FAMOUS! She was a bit disorganized and flustered. It wasn't her best presentation, but anything she talks about is A-o.k. with me. (During the session, my business partner sat there next to me saying "um-hmm", "yes", "absolutely" under her breath. If she had dropped to her knees and shouted "hallelujah", I wouldn't have been surprised.)

Liping Ma discussed curriculum and how the entire curriculum in China supports the fact that: "fractions build on whole numbers, period." With her permission, I'll share her powerpoint slides next week.

The rest of the conference (math-wise) was a disappointment. Dr. Frank Wang gave the same presentation he has given since I started attending the conference 5 years ago. He tells the same jokes and whips out the same newspaper picture of him as a student sitting with John Saxon (Want to know why his legs were crossed?) You can view his Dr. Frank's Math minute videos.

Not that Dr. Wang was the only repeat presentation. It seems like the same 8-10 people present the same thing each year. (Nathan Levy, Dennis Denenberg, Jim Weiss, Poetry Alive, Sheila Offman Gersh, Alex Fillipenko and of course the Hirschs) I didn't attend, however heard many teachers discussing Ruby Payne's keynote "A Framework for Understanding Poverty". "Depressing" was the consensus. Teachers come to the conference to be inspired, not to feel inadequate.

The best keynote speeches of the last several years? In my opinion: Jack Prelutsky and Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Next year's conference will be held at Disneyworld. Not my first choice, especially after attending in D.C., San Antonio & Philadelphia - great American cities rich with Core Knowledge-friendly history.


Final thoughts. Was attendance down this year because of the economy? Districts tend to plan for these pretty far out. We used to schedule a break for students around the conference so that teachers could attend. Will this economy affect the NCTM conference next spring. We aren't presenting and are debating whether to get a booth. (They are pricey!)


FYI- Our session: Core Knowledge meets Singapore Math: Integrating word problems throughtout the curriculum received great reviews!