Please see this page for an introduction to AMiE.
And…we’re off! After many handshakes, hugs and hellos, it was time to grab a seat and listen to Andy Kemp, the first chair of AMiE.
Andy started off by rightly paying tribute to the big team of people who made this joint association a reality. He moved on to talk about mathematics education – and its power to help students learn to reason, and gives them access to truth and intellectual freedom.
He acknowledged the role teachers play in helping students see maths as a beautiful discipline, and a way to understand the world, and to those who help make it accessible for all. Not just teachers, but leaders, those involved in CPD, and those who research, develop the curriculum, and even policy makers who help maths have a wider voice nationally.
So what is AMiE? Andy described maths as a ‘broad and rich landscape’ and AMiE as a ‘home’. A place for us to feel encouraged and supported, and where experience is valued, and pointedly, where disagreement is constructive. He acknowledged the reality that the five founding organisations bring their own perspectives – AMiE is about bringing us together, and not about losing things; ‘not less depth but greater connection’.
If AMiE succeeds, Andy explained, it will be because members feel heard and valued. The real test will not be administrative success, but whether we have created a supportive, connected community; can we equip our charges and prepare them for life?
Andy closed by thanking everyone for being here. He stressed that there is still room for everyone to build an association that does not just inherit the past, but builds something valuable for the future.
This introduction struck exactly the right tone. Let’s hope that his vision is borne out.
Next up – Paul Glaister delivered the opening presidential address, entitled ‘The Beauty and Power of Mathematics’. Having spent 20 minutes chatting with Paul earlier in the day, I had some hint of what he was going to say. Paul had kindly agreed to be the first president of AMiE (soon to be replaced by Sarah Hart), though he was modest enough to stress it was an honorary role.
Early on in his talk Paul mentioned Nick Lord, former head of mathematics at Tonbridge. I was shocked to learn that Nick had died; I had known Nick what feels like a lifetime ago from various residential Easter conferences, and he was a real inspiration.
Paul very rapidly showed what I thought was a particularly elegant problem: find the perimeter of a crescent moon. No spoiler, but the solution was a real ‘aha moment’!
Paul referenced historic articles from Sue Pope and Lynne McClure, two living legends of the maths education community (they may not appreciate being thus described!) in which they had prophetically shared thoughts about the ideal maths teacher association. Good that both were here (and were included in the aforementioned set of ‘hugged’ folks…)
Next, fans of the Sieve of Eratosthenes will have been delighted to see Paul’s interesting take on the idea – probably too detailed to go into here, but the TLDR version is: investigate where primes lie on grids that are other than 10 columns wide…
I was too busy typing to catch all of Paul’s example of a visual solution to a Core maths problem, but his main point was that images are powerful and important for visualising complex problems. He also showed a few examples of using spreadsheets to explore practical investigations around medical calculations. Maybe I was a bit tired by this point, but I found myself not quite engaging with this; I have no doubt others will have excitedly reached for their spreadsheets to have a play…
Next up were Binomial expansions, and Paul referenced the fact that Hardy could not care less whether pure maths ideas such as this had any practical use (in fact, he rather hoped they did not!). The slides seemed to fly past a little too quickly for me to fully take on board the maths involved; my preference would have been for fewer examples and a bit more time for us to have a play. “Are we experiencing an MA/ATM cultural difference here?” quipped my anonymous neighbour :-)
The Collatz sequence was up next, and this would have been the perfect opportunity to take advantage of my previous thought. (Specifically, this is: start anywhere, divide by 2 if even, treble and add 1 if odd, where does this end up?)
Next idea: Koch snowflakes – iterate, and find area and perimeter of shape at each iteration; do they converge? Do the same thing with a square – what happens? What great questions; I REALLY, REALLY wanted to stop and try.
Throughout his talk, Paul shared an amazing array of fascinating ‘I wonder’ problems, lots of which intrigued me and made me want to investigate further. Maybe it’s the teacher in me, or my brain is a bit slow, but I would have preferred fewer problems, slower setups for each, and a bit of time to work on one or two.
But for all that, what was clear was just how passionate Paul was about the beauty of mathematics and the joy of reasoning things through. Some of his animations were fabulous – in particular, I liked a demonstration of chaos theory by modelling double pendulums.
Paul’s final slide summed up why we are all here, so I will leave the final word to this image of it:
We moved straight into a session that was billed as an ‘Interactive session exploring AMiE membership and introduction to the Member Interest Communities (MICs)’, starting with a talk from Peter Lacey. I recall Peter from many years ago at an ATM AGM, giving a passionate speech about the value of the ATM, so I was really encouraged to see that he was happy to support AMiE so publicly.
He invited us to use isometric paper to investigate a problem about areas of triangles and squares. Having introduced the problem, Peter gave us 5 minutes to try it for ourselves. Some of us went straight to pencil and paper, while others preferred to think without drawing – a good reminder that we all approach problem-solving differently.
Next up was David Miles, who introduced us to AMiE’s two maths challenges: the Primary Challenge for Y5 and Y6, and the First Maths Challenge for Y3/34, which was a new one on me but which looks very interesting. The questions were fascinating, and I can imagine they would be very appealing to young mathematicians. David finished by reminding us that there’s still time for schools to apply for the FMC; here’s the link again.
The ‘almost’ final speaker of the morning was Helen Madeley, the vice chair of AMiE, who invited delegates to answer poll questions on Menti.com using their phones; a clever way to poll a big number of people rapidly.
John Barton, chair of AMiE’s membership committee, addressed the issue of slimming down the range of 40 different membership types that AMiE had inherited from its five founding members. He said we were aiming for just three types of membership: Personal, concessionary, and organisational memberships. He outlined the benefits, such as journals, newsletters, CPD events, discounted conference rates, access to resource libraries and back catalogues, etc.
John acknowledged that teachers worked in a wide range of settings, including traditional ones such as schools, early years settings, colleges and universities, but also some less obvious ones, such as prisons, armed forces, charities, vocational colleges, U3A, community education, and more. John was honest that defining what it means to be a member is still ongoing; he extended an invitation to everyone to get involved.
Helen returned with a couple more Menti questions, including how to engage people who were not yet members. It was fun to see the answers appear in real time on the screen. This certainly nudged me in a ‘note to self’ way to investigate Menti next time I am running training.
Phew – brain very full – time for lunch.
For a report on the afternoon session click here.