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Register for the Virtual Math Summit 2021

Look at the list of all the Virtual Math Summit speakers

Welcome, fellow Recovering Traditionalist, to Episode 99. Today, you are getting a Preview of Andre Daughty and Alice Aspinall’s Sessions at the 2021 Virtual Math Summit.

Welcome to Build Math Minds the podcast, where fidelity to your students is greater than fidelity to your textbook. I’m your host, Christina Tondevold, the recovering traditionalist and BuildMathMinds.com Founder, where my mission is to change the way we teach elementary math to our kiddos. Are you ready to start building math minds and not just creating calculators? Let’s get started.

I am gearing up for the 2021 Virtual Math Summit on July 29th and 30th. And as I watched through the sessions, I’m picking out a snippet of each session to share with you. All the sessions for the Virtual Math Summit are prerecorded, but then, they go live on those two days. Many of the presenters will be there interacting with participants in the chat area, and this year, we even have an upgraded experience where you can ask questions of presenters during a few speaker panel Q and A’s. The Virtual Math Summit has always been free to attend for 10 days, but if you want to extend access and have more interaction with presenters, go over to VirtualMathSummit.com/register to see the options for upgrading your VMS experience.

Okay, let’s get into our sneak peeks for this week. 

Our first sneak peek is from Andre Daughty’s session PBL Isn’t Just For Gifted and Talented Students. 

Andre is an exciting presenter who is well-known for his practical and inspiring talks that focus on engaging all our students. The first time I saw Andre present, I reached out to him. He has a dynamic personality that keeps you engaged the entire time, and I could totally see that he speaks from experience on how he engages his own students.

Andre Daughty: “Because there are so many superheroes and superhero movies out right now, that’s going to be the theme. So let’s think about all of the different superheroes. All of these superheroes were considered scientists, nerds, really, really smart geniuses. Let me name a few for you. You got Spider-Man. He had Hulk. His real name was Professor Banner, and then, he even morphed it to now, it’s Professor Hulk. You had Iron Man, who was a genius, who figured out how to go back in time. You have Beast from the X-Men. You have Hank Pym, who is the Ant Man. Professor X had a PhD in genetics. You have Reed Richards, who ended up being one part of the Fantastic Four. You have Shuri, who was the smartest woman that I’ve ever seen in the comics, but not just Shuri. You’ve got Moon Girl, who a lot of people may not know about. You’ve got She-Hulk.

And then, you even have Batman … well, really, Batman is more rich than smart, but he’s smart enough to find people to help him do all the gadgets and all the things. Then, you have Miles Morales. Miles Morales is just a regular kid, and Miles Morales, of course, gets bitten just like Peter Parker. And in terms of comic-book lore, Miles Morales was not gifted and talented. Miles Morales was not the typical genius nerd. Miles was just a regular person, just like me, just like a lot of the students you serve, but Miles had his own gifts and had his own talents. What I’m saying is there’s nothing against people who are gifted and talented. There’s nothing against the people who are considered ‘geniuses’ or who have gone through those tests, and they are classified as ‘gifted and/or talented,’ nothing against them at all. But what I am saying is that there are a lot of students who are gifted and talented. They just don’t fit those tests.”

Up next is Alice Aspinall and a piece from her session titled “Building Math Confidence: Starting At Home.”

I first learned of Alice via Instagram and was drawn in by her children’s book, “Everyone Can Learn Math.” Her mission is to help parents, educators and kids love mathematics, and that starts by helping kids learn to see math everywhere, not just in school

Alice Aspinall: “Today, we’re going to explore, and hopefully, learn together, how we can build math confidence in our young students and in our young children, starting at home. We live in a society filled with people who hate math or suffer from math anxiety, but we can try to change the narrative for our children and students. We want our children to grow up seeing the beauty and joy of mathematics. We can do this by bringing math into their worlds, through positive experiences and finding the math around us. I have chosen three main ideas to explore today to help us with this endeavor. We will explore mathematical concepts found in everyday experiences and learn how to build our students’ confidence with mathematics.” 

If you want to watch these entire presentations, make sure you go get registered for the summit. 

Andre Daughty and Alice Aspinall’s sessions are just some of the great sessions we have in store for you during the Virtual Math Summit, 2021. You can find the entire list of speakers at virtualmathsummit.com/speakers. I’ll also link to it over the show notes page at buildmathminds.com/99, which means we’re on episode 99, which also means, next week, we hit the hundred mark. To celebrate, I’ll be doing a giveaway on next week’s podcast. So make sure you subscribe to this podcast wherever you are listening so that you don’t miss that episode. I’ll see you next week.

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As you start off the school year, I want you to keep in mind what is really important as we're trying to teach mathematics to our students.