PSCTM Calendar

Directions to Bishop Blanchet High School:
From the North: Take the 85th Street exit from I5 (just after Northgate) and turn left on Wallingford.
From the South: Take the 85th Street exit from I5 (just after Lake City Way) and turn left on Wallingford.

Spring Dinner - Monday, May 18th, 2020

Special Social Distancing Considerations:
The Spring Dinner is being held as a Zoom meeting, starting at 5:00 PM. Note the time difference from our usual social hour, dinner, and speaker schedule.

Supporting Math at Home
Dan Finkel, Founder, Math For Love

Right now more math than ever is taking place at home. How do we help parents develop the tools they need to have productive math conversations with their kids? How can we use play as a way to eep math time joyful and light in these heavy times?
We're all figuring it out as we go! I'll share some of what I've tried in my communications with parents, and some fo the positive opportunities I see for math at home in this challenging moment.

"After completing my PhD in mathematics and the University of Washington, I decided that teaching math is the most important contribution I can make to the world. I've devoted much of my life to understanding and teaching the motivation, history, aesthetics, and deep structure of mathematics. Math is a maligned and mistreated subject, often mis-taught, often misunderstood. My goal is to give everyone the chance to fall in love with mathematics. Whether you excel or struggle, whether you're a teacher or student, parent or child, if you want to learn what math is really about, I can help." --- Dan Finkel

Winter Dinner - Monday, February 10th, 2020

The Mindful Equation
Shelly Henderson, Health Educator

Shelly will be speaking about bringing mindfulness strategies into the classroom to help overcome anxiety around learning and testing. Participants will walk away with strategies to help their students approach their studies in a more relaxed and calm manner.

Shelly has been a health educator for the past 25 years. Her work has included working with senior citizens, children, small and large companies and research. Her passion is helping people discover their best self. A couple of years ago, Shelly decided to also include the mental/emotional side of wellness and completed a training course to begin teaching people to practice mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness is something Shelly was personally practicing, so she knew its benefits, and thought it a perfect addition to her skill set. Working with children in schools has been extremely rewarding and students have reported how useful this practice has been for them. Mindfulness is a tool that anyone can use, and everyone can benefit from.

Fall Dinner - Monday, October 21, 2019

Math Between Us: A Perspective from Northern Europe
Jana Dean, M.Ed MS Teacher, Olympia SD

Jana Dean spent six months in Dutch classrooms investigating the intersection of learning math and learning language. Join her for stories and findings that will make you see what we do well, and perhaps what we can do better. Highlights include what we can learn from Dutch kids learning math in English, what happens in an environment of total school choice, and the far-reaching implications of special education law. Most importantly, see how looking at America from afar can help you celebrate what works in our schools every day.

Jana Dean is a middle school teacher in the Olympia School District. A recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Distinguished Award in Teaching as well as the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math Teaching, she brings a deep curiosity about the intersection of math and language to her research and to her eighth-grade classroom.
This curiosity is informed by her experience as a language-learner herself. She spent a year of high school in a French-speaking city, attended a dual-language graduate immersion program in educational leadership, and learned Dutch during her Fulbright fellowship. In addition, she brings her experience as a performing storyteller to her academic work in language. She is particularly interested in the role of register - both within and across languages - for supporting conceptual development.

Spring Dinner - Monday, May 13th, 2019

Ethnomathematics: Pushing Back Against K-12 Traditional School Mathematics
Saraswati Noel, UW PhD Candidate

This workshop aims to push back against current US schools' eurocentric forms of mathematics as well as exploring the concept of ethnomathematics, the relationship between math and culture.

Participants will engage in mathematical activities that center family, community, indigenous and ancestral knowledge and learn about current efforts to bring Ethnic Studies curriculum to mathematics classrooms in Seattle Public Schools to connect and improve academic success for all students. Saraswati Noel is a former math educator at Seattle World School, which primarily serves recent immigrants to the US. She currently is earning her Ph.D. in Math Education at the University of Washington. Saraswati is passionate about immigration rights and is committed to diversifying educational materials to create a space where all voices are able to contribure to the growth and development of public pedagogy.

Winter Dinner - Monday, February 11th, 2019

cancelled due to snow

Fall Dinner - Monday, October 15, 2018

Making it Stick in the Classroom
Lynn Adsit, Mercer Island High School, T3 Regional Coach

"Learning is deeper and more durable when it is effortful." We'll do a quick intro/review of the key strategies presented in the book, Make It Stick - The Science of Successful Learning, by Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III. These strategies are: Retrieval and Spaced Practice, Interleaving, Elaboration, Dual Coding, Concrete Examples, and Generation. Then, let's collaborate about how to leverage scientific research on learning in the math classroom to help our students learn deeply for retention.