Building Support Communities for Statistics Educators

It's been a week since I returned home from Japan and I think I am finally recovered from the jet lag. At least, I hope I am. I spent a couple of days in Tokyo, then took the Shinkansen to Kyoto for the 10th International Conference on Teaching Statistics (ICOTS). Lynette Hudiburgh [of Miami University] and I presented about a topic near and dear to us – statistics teacher support communities.

MfA Fall Function: Why I Stay

A few weeks ago, I had the honor of being asked to be the teacher keynote speaker at the 10th Annual MƒA Fall Function. Early in writing my speech it became clear that my speech should be about me, about the positive impact MƒA has had on my teaching career, but most importantly about what I feel makes MƒA so meaningful to someone like me.

The following is the speech I gave:

Thanks to the... Election, Statistics is Cool Again

Way back in 2012, Ellie Terry Vierling and I presented "Thanks to the 2012 Election, Statistics is Cool Again" at the inaugural MƒA MT²: Master Teachers on Teaching. Ellie and I looked at statistically modeling issues related to the election and cowrote an activity that we conducted in our classrooms. Guess what? Despite the fact that the 2016 presidential election is just slightly more bananas, it's still relevant.

Statistics Education & Social Justice

In August, I facilitated and attended a planning day with some fellow AP Statistics teachers at Math for America in NYC. We meet regularly throughout the year but we decided that the end of September was too long to wait to fully prepare for our year. Over a dozen of us showed up at the MƒA offices and spent over 4 hours discussing prep for our AP Stats courses. One of the main things on the agenda: how to incorporate social justice into our stats classes.

Putting Stats Projects into Practice

Over the years, one of the ways that I've grown as a stats educator is to incorporate more projects and activities into my classroom routine. I often use these projects as a cumulative assessment and as a way to summarize units. These projects can be time-consuming, but I find they are worth doing to help students assimilate information and apply statistical skills in new ways. They help make concepts more tangible, and have been a contributing factor in my students success on traditional tests like the AP exam.

I often get asked how I balance projects with the packed AP Stats curriculum, make the projects appealing for students, and ensure student success. One of the most satisfying comments I got last year from a student in regard to her final project: "Never enjoyed a project this much. It didn't even feel like a project." It has taken me a while to get the hang of how to make project-based tasks work. Now that I've done lots of rounds of them, though, I love how much it has influenced the culture of learning in my classroom.

So, here's a long overdue post to respond to these requests. (While this advice is based on my experience with statistics projects, I see no reason why they wouldn't apply to any STEM project.)

Randomization Tests: Using Technology to Guide Inferential Thinking

In my AP Statistics classes, I have been using simulations as a means to teach various topics in the curriculum. For the past year or so, I've introduced the use of StatKey to do randomization tests.

Using Data in the Science Classroom

Last December, one of my Math for America colleagues, science teacher Liz Whelan, gave a talk about how her students use real-time data to investigate research questions about local water quality.