Last week I had the exciting opportunity to participate in CAMT (Conference for the Advancement of Mathematical Teaching) 2022 in San Antonio, Texas. This is an annual three day summer conference that alternates between the cities of San Antonio, Fort Worth, and Houston. The cost for the in person conference this year was $299. There is also an option to attend virtually. Although it is a Texas conference, presenters and exhibitors come from all over the country. For me it was pretty amazing to get to see Peter Liljedahl, Nicki Newton, and Kim Sutton speak in person.
Over the next couple of weeks I will be writing posts about the things I learned and what I was inspired to research. I will be adding links as I get these done. For today I wanted to write my overview of the conference.
Logistics
The location for CAMT this year was the Henry B. Gonzalez convention center, which was HUGE!! I really wasn’t expecting just how big the place was and how spread out different sessions were. I heard several teachers complain of hurting feet, and we all know teachers are already used to being on their feet all day. Definitely wear good walking shoes and look at the locations of sessions when planning your day.
Maybe in part because the center was so big, the sessions were spaced 30 minutes apart, but they ran all day. You had to choose your own times to be in sessions or to break for meals or to visit the exhibit hall. The sessions were all listed on the website, but I really found it cumbersome to use. Eventually I just went to the speaker list to choose which speakers I wanted to see and find their sessions. The first day the website kept crashing and refusing to load, although it ran much better by the second day. The technology conference I went to earlier this summer had an event specific app that was SO MUCH more user friendly. (Then again it was a technology conference!)
Definitely do what they say and print your name badge before arriving. I and many other people didn’t as I have gotten used to being able to scan my phone. We were sent to a long long line at registration to get the print out before being allowed to come in.
Water was provided throughout the conference center. There were places to purchase basic cafe style food- sandwiches, salads, chips, coffee, etc. There was a pizza place. Most teachers I saw were going to breakfast before arriving at the conference. This meant many skipped the first session. I heard the conference organizers started giving out t-shirts to people at the 8:15 opening sessions! I think the technology conference had the right idea in providing a free and good breakfast to everyone 🙂
CAMT Exhibit Hall
The exhibit hall was huge and had so many fun things to see!
There were a few non math exhibitors. Shoe inserts for aching feet and a massage gun for trigger points are two that caught my attention. There were the usual free samples, candy, pens, and prize wheels. Many exhibitors did drawings for gift cards or baskets. ST Math made me laugh with their teacher back to school gift basket which included alcohol.
It was my own fault for not looking closely at the schedule, but the exhibit hall closed at noon on the last day of the conference (which went until 5) so I didn’t get a chance to go back at the end like I had planned to.
CAMT Featured Speakers
Sponsors for this year’s conference were Texas Instruments and ST Math. I love ST Math, so that was kind of exciting to me! I took a picture of their giant inflatable penguin to show my students. They also gave me a conference specific laptop sticker of a penguin playing guitar.
Featured speakers included:
Berkeley Everett of the UCLA Math Project,
Nigel Nisbet from Mind Research Institute,
Robert Kaplinsky,
Donna Boucher from Math Coach’s Corner,
Pam Harris from Math Is Figure-Out-Able,
my favorites I mentioned before (Kim Sutton of Creative Mathematics, Nicki Newton, Peter Liljedahl who wrote Building Thinking Classrooms, ) and many other consultants, authors, college professors/researchers, and more. Here is the full list.
Many of them gave out links to their presentations as well as handouts. Some gave away physical items- freebies I came home with included a Hand2Mind rekenrek, tetrahedron dice and colored chips, various game boards, and a very cool set of KP ten frame tiles.
I found there was wide variety in the quality of the presentations. There were some where I left completely inspired and with a lot to think about and put into practice, and others where I feel like there really was not an hour’s worth of content worth listening to. Overall, however, CAMT was a fantastic conference well worth attending! Get more information at this link
I’ll write posts about the specific speakers I got to see and link those as I publish!
Posts written so far:
