This is just a quick comment to say that something must be up with the Twitter search results regarding articles in MT, MTMS, or TCM. I know I’ve tweeted many times to my own or others’ articles in those journals, linking specifically to the NCTM article pages.

But I agree that the practitioner journals are way too slow to build energy or momentum for their ideas. For example, I have (what I think is) a really great linear systems lesson that I developed with my brother. It’s been accepted for publication in MT but it’s going to be about a two year gap between submission and publication.

Hey Dan – thanks for this. There’s some really important stuff in here. One correction though (that coincides with Sam’s response).

The editorial board of TCM (full disclosure – which includes me) is working hard to create some kinetic energy around the journal. We are hold a #TCMChat each month on twitter around the free preview manuscript (Which coincidentally means we tweet the heck out of link to the free preview every month).

We think this chat aims to do exactly what you’re writing about. It allows for the potential energy to quickly be channeled into kenetic much quicker than the 11 month turnaround for written responses to be published in the journal. We’ve invited the authors to join the chat and some of them have not only joined but provided some of the guiding questions for the chat.

We also held a tweet up in San Francisco and had about a dozen folks attend the monthly chat in person at NCTM Central.

Yep! We’ve definitely seen an increase in the number of individuals who are visiting the page each month for the free preview manuscript (both as compared to the same month last year and month to month). And we storify each conversation and I think there is some nice anecdotes in there to support that there is more engagement around the manuscripts then there was previously. Check them out here: https://storify.com/TCM_at_NCTM

Only in the past few years have I realized how important it is to see myself as part of a profession, and to give dues to a professional organization which advocates on my behalf on the broadest scale. (A lot of this thinking came from talking with Peg Cagle.) And NCTM does this advocacy, and I’m happy to be a member this reason. (Though I would love for there to be a place to see where this advocacy is taking place and what is being advocated (maybe that exists already?)). So for that alone, NCTM is important to me.

I have a more complex relationship with NCTM’s journal _Mathematics Teacher_, as a #MTBoS-er. I am a volunteer editor for one of the departments of MT. I see it a way for me to give back to the profession. But I have mixed feelings about it as a #MTBoS-er.

Every so often, I come across a blogpost or amazing blogger and have the urge to say “Hey! Submit to the journal!” But I haven’t done so. Even though I desperately want to see more actual classroom teachers have their activities/articles appear in the journal (and fewer grad students/college professors). Why? This internal conversation:

Me: What a great activity! It would make such an awesome article for MT!
OtherMe: But… then the teacher would have to formally write it up and submit it… and risk putting that work in for a rejection??? And… if it IS accepted, what good does it do them? They aren’t college professors who need publications. They just need time to get to that pile of grading that has been sitting on their desk way too long…
Me: Well… maybe publication would makes them feel good?
OtherMe: But they can blog and tweet about it! And let’s say they do submit, and it does get accepted. Then their ideas are trapped behind a paywall, so they wouldn’t be sharing their activity freely to the world like they are doing now.
Me: Couldn’t they just post it on their blog once it gets published?
OtherMe: I don’t think that’s allowed.
Me: Oh. So a time commitment to write the article, the risk of rejection, and if accepted, their ideas trapped behind a paywall? When they are part of a community of people who believe in a gift culture?

To be clear, I’m not saying people shouldn’t submit articles to NCTM journals. I think there can be great value in working with an editor to improve the article/activity. I feel pretty confident that the number of people who reads these journals is higher than the number of people who read math teacher blogs. But for me as a part of a community which already shares ideas freely, comments on them, improves them… I don’t see how an NCTM journal can compare. Immediacy, feedback, and encouragement make blogging the choice for me.

(For me as a reader, I know which blogs I like to follow whose approach to teaching and ideas speak to me, that relate to what I’m doing in the classroom… with MT, in every issue are a number of articles that don’t directly interest me because of who or what I’m teaching.)

I don’t have a central thought, but I figured I’d share what has been rattling around my head for a while now.

Thank you for explaining a lot of what NCTM is and how they operate. Thank you for always encouraging us to blog, tweet, write, be noisy, not to hear ourselves, but to be say what we believe (esp. in the hopes that someone who wouldn’t necessarily shout it out, but can hear themselves in your words, be heard .

1) A lovely member of the NCTM board came by the MTBoS booth on Sunday when I was hosting to thank us for our work and the importance it has in building community.

2) The second benefit I thought was putting NCTM membership on my resume.But I don’t know what I belong to, because I have no sense of belongign. I guess NCTM doesn’t speak to me because it is a one way communication feed. With MTBoS, I can sometimes ask for help and sometimes be helpful. I feel empowered and important that way.

3) I used to think the biggest benefit from being an NCTM member was the MT journal. I have a Master’s Degree in Education, a BA in Math and I can hardly understand a thing it says and rarely find anything that speaks to me or is useful.

4) Why is there nothing from NCTM that I could find at the annual to help our school district and in particular, the 6-12 schools, meet our desperate need for decent CCSS curriculum?

5) I love how Kaneka used her page as a forum and felt very heard. More energy to encourage those interactions please.

Thanks again Dan for encouraging me to speak freely.

Dan —

Thank you for your blog post. The central issue you raise is the one that keeps me up at night: the future of NCTM and its value to members. Rest assured the issues you raise are the very ones that have been, and that will continue to be part of NCTM Board meeting discussions. I do want to take the opportunity to update you and your readers on some of the issues you raise.

Advocacy

One of the unfortunate things about advocacy work is that it is often invisible. For example, past-president Diane Briars and NCTM staff were involved on Capitol Hill with Congressional staff on the reauthorization of ESEA, now ESSA; with the Hunt Institute, NCTM held an advocacy conference in February for state Affiliate and state department of education leaders to support collaborative advocacy planning — a pilot project we intend to continue. In addition NCTM provides advocacy tools, such as the Teaching and Learning Mathematics with the Common Core video series to support local and national advocacy efforts of others. On a personal note, I dedicated my presentations at NCSM and NCTM in San Francisco to issues surrounding advocacy. I share your dream that NCTM’s advocacy work becomes both more aggressive and visible.

Journals

You are correct; our journals are not nimble. Some of this is simply the nature of a peer-reviewed journal versus a blog post or tweet. As some of the responses to your blog indicate, there have been and continue to be tweets about articles. We will continue to explore ways to improve engagement, e.g. Twitter chats, with our journals. I believe there is a need, and room, for both forms of publishing.

Conferences

We have been excited to see the positive results from giving NCTM Annual Conference speakers their own webpage and we intend to extend the conference webpage feature this fall.

Community

I wholeheartedly agree with your point that NCTM needs to import community and that the obligation goes both ways. This is why I have personally appointed a number of high-profile individuals from the MTBoS to several NCTM standing committees as well as program committees. It’s also why you and I, along with NCTM staff, are working together in the next few weeks to make sure that longstanding NCTM functions and events don’t conflict with new events so that various communities can interact and share perspectives.

The “Ideal Member”

While you may not be the “median” member Dan, you are from my perspective the ideal member — as is anyone who is committed to ensuring that the needs and interests of mathematics teachers are supported and that each and every mathematics student receives the education he/she needs to become a productive member of our democratic society. I welcome our continued collaboration as I do the larger mathematics education community, so that we together can build a more effective NCTM.

Matt Larson
NCTM President

Intriguing post, Dan. Hope you get heard by the powers that be in NCTM. I never was able to manage to get more than the occasional polite nod. You’re speaking to a very political entity that for decades has been controlled by its mostly conservative (in a variety of senses) board. Maybe things have changed in the two years since I quit the organization (I’m so out of it, I had no clue who the current president was), or perhaps they’re in the process of changing. But my guess is that you and like-minded younger members will have to drag NCTM kicking and screaming into the second half of the 20th century. Getting it into the 21st century might take another half century or so.

As I’ve gotten more involved with Oregon Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which is one of many NCTM affiliates, I’ve been wondering whether it would be fruitful for the MTBoS community to get more involved with these local affiliates generally.

For advocacy, local affiliates aren’t as powerful as NCTM because they don’t represent as many people, but just as you’re more likely to get your letter to the editor published in the local news than in the New York Times, local affiliates could advocate to local school boards, press outlets, and politicians and might be heard. As far as I know, OCTM does not do this, but I don’t see why we couldn’t if it were important to our members.

OCTM does do professional development, and it’s far more accessible to us in Oregon than NCTM’s regional or national conferences are. In addition to local events around the state, OCTM has a yearly Oregon Math Leaders conference in Salem every summer with presentations by members, and hosts the stellar Northwest Mathematics Conference every third year, alternating with Washington and British Columbia’s NCTM affiliates. We are particularly lucky that NWMC has been run by MTBoS-savvy people like Jennifer Bell, so the synergy with the online community is terrific.

As for community, I feel the same as I do about NCTM’s conferences: participating in the MTBoS community makes me value “real life” interactions with the same people more, and vice versa, although currently, this is less true for OCTM than for NCTM, because most OCTM members formed their connections and community offline and aren’t (yet?) very involved with the MTBoS. However, at last summer’s Oregon Math Leaders conference, people were very interested in becoming more active online, and many turned out to be very aware of prominent MTBoS tweeters, bloggers, and presenters, even if they were fairly quiet online themselves.

It was partly my early connections to the MTBoS that brought me back into contact with Jennifer Bell, and she and others gradually lured me into a role with OCTM. Through that, I’ve organized local math educator gatherings at a Portland brewpub, then ended up redoing OCTM’s webpage, octm.org , not so much because I’m professional at it as because I knew I could do it and it was a useful thing to do. And through THAT involvement, of course I end up promoting the MTBoS and related sites just because that’s where so much cool math is! I made the home page as a Desmos graph (it looks crappy on phones but I like it on computers), and my updates to the links list at http://www.octm.org/links.html had a decidedly MTBoSy tilt.

Also, I’ve written articles for OCTM’s journal (The Oregon Math Teacher) on joining Twitter and the MTBos, “Jewels on the Web” (cool websites), and on giving my class a “How old is the shepherd”-like problem after reading about it on Tracy Zager’s and Robert Kaplinsky’s blogs.

Now, I don’t consider myself as involved in the MTBoS OR in OCTM as many other people, but aren’t those overlaps great? What if we all did something similar with our local affiliates?

I suppose this is an adjacent suggestion to NCTM, but it seems like a good place.
I’ve gotten some benefit as a classroom teacher who has presented at NCTM Annual Meeting over the past two years. But what is holding me back from going every year is the cost of going to the conference.
1. The time cost. To attend SF this year, I missed 4 days of class, and for Boston last year, 3 days. I teach AP (IB this year) classes, so missing these particular days is very hard. Missing any school time is a tough proposition, and time during review for these important exams is even more tough. I’d guess that asking classroom teachers to miss school time in April eliminates about half of those interested in attending. I’m happy to hear that the annual meeting will be soon shifted to the fall.
2. The financial cost. I am partly supported by my school for going to NCTM, but I still had to pay for about half. I’d be willing to bet that classroom teachers pay the biggest share of the cost when compared to district math coaches, university professors, or anyone who works for a private company. Also, why in the world are you asking for presenters to pay a nearly full rate? Doesn’t this limit the quantity (and hence quality) of the applicants? I present partly out of justification to the cost to my district, and partly because I like it. But it’s an internal struggle for me to see why I should pay to present.
3. The presenting cost. Preparing a talk as a presenter takes time, and I like the thought that happens in this process. But, having to submit a talk idea 11.5 months before giving it? That’s bizarre. It also makes it more difficult to prepare for; thoughts and ideas can change drastically after thinking about them for 11.5 months. I thankfully didn’t have these troubles for my two talks, but it forces me to limit the scope of what topics I’d like to present.

If we want more classroom teachers present at NCTM’s Annual meeting, and if we want more of them presenting, I’d love for some actions to be done to address these three costs. I don’t want to take it for granted that many people actually want more classroom teachers presenting, but I’d sure like to see their voices amplified. I think it’d make for a stronger conference, and maybe a stronger set of teachers who are in contact with actual students every day.

Dan, great article!

I appreciate your points about the NCTM. I’m also DYING to see the blog list you follow. I LOVE math bloggers and cannot get enough.

I have found some amazing teachers and math professionals out there in the blog world and I’m always looking for more. Who do you recommend? Can you post some of the blogs you follow? Thanks!

HI Dan,

I have to admit I am not a big blog reader, but this came to me from a friend via a email and as an NCTM past president, I read it with great interest. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and candor with these issues.

As Matt said, many of these ideas/concerns/issues have been on the plate of the NCTM board at least since my return to the NCTM board in 2012 as president-elect (and likely earlier.) In 2000 NCTM had a membership of over 100,000 (possibly due to the publication and impact of PSSM) Also true in 2000, social media, as we know it today was in it’s infancy.

Interestingly an extensive survey was taken back around 2011 asking members why they joined NCTM and one of the highest ranked answers was to receive one or more of the journals. I agree that time lapse between receipt and review of a manuscript and potential publication is way too long, especially in this day of instagram, facebook, twitter and blogs. And while you see the value of JRME, as a classroom teacher TCM and MTMS were my first go to’s for my own PD and continue to be for articles to share with colleagues. Recent articles of interest (13 rules that expire; Assessing basic fact fluency) and older articles (Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say) continue to inspire rich conversations in my classes and workshops. The thorough vetting process for manuscripts to be accepted for publication ensures ongoing high quality in each journal. I hope that NCTM continues to look for ways to make this process more efficient. Do I read the journals from cover to cover? Hardly…but I do look for articles of interest and, when I want information on a particular topic being able to search for journal articles online will often yield the best result from one of NCTM’s journals.

Advocacy…I had quite an education in all that happens in NCTM under the umbrella of advocacy when I returned to the BoD. And we, as members are so unaware of all that goes on behind the scenes NCTM has to do a better job of “self-promotion” and getting information out to the public. This was something that I repeatedly requested as president. How do we know what is happening if no one tells us? Why doesn’t NCTM use facebook, twitter, etc etc to better inform its members — not only of the work of the organization but also of other important “happenings” in the world of mathematics education. I read summing up (the online newsletter) each month…but that is not enough. I want more timely information and that should be something we (and our members) can help to address immediately.

Conferences. I have to admit, I am a conference junky! I learn, I share, I review materials in the exhibit hall, I network with old friends and make new friends and colleagues. Conferences are like a huge professional party. At the same time, my expenses to attend NCTM and NCSM in Oakland/San Francisco were over $3,000. Wow! What classroom teacher can afford to do that yearly? I love all that you, the Math Forum and others are doing to bring the conference to those who cannot attend for financial or other reasons. I am not surprised that NCTM is supporting you all in these efforts and hope to see that continue.

I am a “seasoned” mathematics teacher..my needs are different from an early career teacher. They are different from a mid-career teacher. The needs of a mathematics education researcher are different from those of a classroom teacher. The needs of a person who works with pre-service teachers are different from someone who provides PD to current teachers. What is important is to realize that we are all in this together to help students see and appreciate the beauty of mathematics and to learn mathematics in ways that are meaningful to them. To encourage, to inspire and to hand our hopes on these kids who we and our colleagues see everyday. To be everything to everyone is a pretty tall order…even for a national organization.

One of the things I have learned is that the biggest step members and non-members can take is to continue to have hard, challenging discussions with the board and staff of NCTM. Trust me, they are willing to listen and eager for your input. Just as students can’t sit back and wait for the “learnin’ to happen” mathematics teachers must be actively involved in the profession, whether than means a math teachers’ circle, membership in an affiliate or in NCTM, creating a blog. It’s so easy to complain and so hard to make a difference!

Thank you for restarting this conversation publicly. I look forward to reading the ideas of others!

Dan, I wonder if this represents your thoughts ala the tasty/easy fruit? (https://blog.mrmeyer.com/wp-content/uploads/080305_3.jpg via xkcd)

http://i.imgur.com/wuNaaC8.png disclaimer: those points are extremely haphazardly placed!

I see NCTM’s magazines as a possible way to legitimize practitioner work, but a couple things work against it:

1. it is time intensive to prepare an article
2. the magazine has limited space and is therefore selective.

why should a teacher invest a lot of time in an article that may not be selected and printed? Especially when there is an easier mode of publication: blogging.

So I think an NCTM curated blog could aim to fit in-between the magazines and public blogs. The selection process could be relaxed a little, but it would also up the quality from a run of the mill blog. Many teachers also blog about other things than math education — nothing wrong with that of course, but it gives an opportunity for an NCTMblogzone ™ to publish insightful articles, categorize them, increase readership of them.

It could begin by selecting from existing blogs, and then could morph into a submission process.

Henri, Dan, Scott and others,

As an NCTM Journal Editor I am posting these questions in an effort to gather some feedback for the Editorial Panels to consider.

Due to the time it takes to produce each journal, a “best of the blogs” department published in the journal would be subject to lag time between when the highlighted blog post is posted online and when the related department article is published. Would the time lapse undermine the intent and effectiveness of such a department? Would the lag time be acceptable?

Scott suggested a curated blog. As Dan replied, the NCTM Journals have hosted blogs for over two years. (SHAMELESS PLUG–we would LOVE for the #MTBos community to engage in discussion on these blog posts. This is the link to the TCM blog. Note the bloggers change on a regular basis. http://www.nctm.org/tcm-blog/ )

Each of the current journal blogs focus on a specific theme. What are your thoughts on the current themes/topics? Should the journals continue or retire the current themes? What are your thoughts on the NCTM Journals launching additional blogs? For example, a modified version of what Henri suggested as a published department where each blog post highlights other blogs/bloggers. Or, a blog that is for really good ideas that for various reasons might night be acceptable for a full length journal article. Or a blog that highlights the great things happening in classrooms. Or……what other ideas would be of interest to the #MTBos community. What is NCTM uniquely positioned to do that is not already being addressed in the blogosphere?

Before any of you respond to this query keep in mind that NCTM is a volunteer driven organization. It is one thing to suggest that the Council launch something new–it is another to find volunteers willing to give their time and expertise to make it happen. Let NCTM know that you are willing to volunteer to serve on one of the many committees that bring great suggestions into being. http://www.nctm.org/About/President,-Board-and-Committees/Volunteer-for-a-Committee/

Thank you in advance,

Beth Skipper
NCTM Journal Editor

Hi Beth,

I was originally thinking “best of the blogs” would be online but I can see a place in the paper journals as well — as you and Henri.

I appreciate that NCTM is volunteer based, I do want to thank all the volunteers who have put their time in!!

Let me define some terms for myself so I can keep them straight:
Journal – like JRME
Magazine – like Mathematics Teacher or Teaching Children Mathematics
Publication Blog – like http://www.nctm.org/tcm-blog/
Personal Blog – like blog.mrmeyer.com or http://fawnnguyen.com/

I think I’m a fan of adding voices to that spot between the Magazines and the Personal Blogs. Publication Blogs occupy this middle ground right now from a “generalized” point of view: they offer detailed posts in a kind of reflective or idealized voice.

How about the “immediacy” point of view? The “I just had a great lesson I’ve got to tell somebody” aspect? This can be achieved by collecting online “the best of the personal blogs”. I’d say posts don’t need to be truly immediate, within a week or month even can still be good– but the *feeling* of it I think needs to be “in the moment”

I think these two aspects are symbiotic. “In the moment” blog posts are not going to be as well thought out or be as complete an offering as the Publication Blogs you have right now — but perhaps by interspacing in a “curated personal blog post” you can balance them out. And– this might attract a larger participatory audience to the Publication Blogs.

I think I also like Henri’s suggestion that perhaps there is a second level of curation that makes it into the paper magazines. (I think that’s what he’s saying?) And I like his idea that the writers could respond to some of their comments to put a “2nd version” in paper publication.

Love this conversation and spirit. I think we’d need to have an intermediate webpage where NCTM hosts the links to the best of blogs. Write a lovely column in prose summarizing the blogs and why they should go read them right now, but direct everybody to a single website where the links are collected. Otherwise you’d have URL alphabet soup in your printed column. And QR codes are too ugly.

Indeed, people have already gathered the best of 2015 and made a book!
http://mtbos2015.pressbooks.com/
Thanks Tina and Lani!

Tracy, yes, “News from the Net” was focused on resources not blogs. (Did blogs even exist in the late 90’s?) A similar department/column published today could be devoted to blogs or review both blogs and other web-based resources.

I should have been more specific with my question…would a similar one-page format with a general description of the blog with, perhaps, a brief summary of some of the entries begin to meet the need detailed in the previous comments here? By that I mean serve as a bridge between the printed journal(s) and the blogosphere?

This is where my ears perk up because, as an editor, I see a real difference between blogs and print. I think a lot of bloggers don’t see that difference, but it’s an important one. So the question of how much “massaging” to do would come up if the journals started printing blogs. We’re not talking a quick shoulder rub. It’s more of the deep tissue Swedish stuff.

Not to mention the legal and logistical issues of permission slips for student work and images and the requirement of higher quality/resolution photos, etc.

Given all that, I think a more realistic option is a summary, GMD-style, of a handful of really strong blogs from the last month. Give enough info for the reader to want to go check it out for herself. Isn’t that the point? To get the print readers online and the online people more feedback? If we print the blogs, then the print readers only read the magazine because it’s right there for them. I want to tease enough to get some percentage to actually go read the blog, which will hopefully lead to more links and blogs and archives and such. And readers would feel like NCTM was helping them by curating high quality stuff.

Tracy,

Remind me please, what is “GMD.”

Also, explain what you mean by the journals giving GMD a column.

No worries! I knew I had seen it before. Thank you for the reminder.

Wow! This is a treasure trove of information. I will certainly pass this along to the Editorial Panels as something to be considered.

Obviously this conversation needs to continue among the NCTM editors and board, but I can’t resist adding a couple of personal anecdotes here, to show that the gap between blog posts and articles is not necessarily an abyss.

A few years ago, after posting something on my blog, I was contacted by the editor of the Mathematics Teacher who asked me to expand it for publication as a SoundOff. It was not hard to do: I lengthened it and added figures, and it was published.

This year, I thought I would adapt something from my Web site for SoundOff. I expanded it a little, and submitted it. The response was that this was *exactly* the sort of thing they were looking for, in both form and content, but they could not use it, because it was too close to the original, which was freely available on the Web.

To me this says that in at least some cases, (the ones our Best of the Blogs editor would pick,) the transition is absolutely possible. In my first experience, the massaging was successful. In my second experience, the ONLY objection given was that most of it had appeared on the Web, which of course would not be an issue.

For reasons that elude me, NCTM’s blogs haven’t found a great deal of traction.

Group blogs, as a rule, don’t work on today’s internet. The web we currently have, it seems to me, is designed for following people, not publications. Group twitter accounts have a rough time too.