ATMOPAV EXECUTIVE BOARDBob Lochel - President. Contact Bob.
Dan Ilaria - First Vice President Marian Avery - Immediate Past-President Steve Fuguet - Membership Chair. Mary Hayburn - Recording Secretary. Mark Wassmansdorf - Treasurer. Want to join the ATMOPAV Board? Contact Bob and express your interest. We meet a number of times during the school year through virtual meetings to plan events for the coming year. 
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PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE - October 2023
Last month at PCTM Professional Development Day in Malvern, keynote speaker Ralph Pantozzi challenged teachers to "Meet, Play, Make and Move" with a task that is still rattling around my brain. Teachers in groups of 6 or 7 stood in a circle. Each person in the circle started by standing, with an alternate position of sitting to come later. At any time, anyone in the circle could say "change", which would cause the two people in the circle to the immediate left and right of the "change" order to switch their status (sitting to standing or standing to sitting). The goal, to get all members of the group to sit at the same time. It was great fun watching teachers collaborate, discuss, start over, and think about strategies....with no eventual resolution. No groups were able to complete the task successfully. The next day I tried this task with my 9th graders, substituting "hands down" and "hands on head" with standing and sitting. The room was abuzz with ideas, collaboration and laughter. No team completed the task after a few minutes, and the class eventually went back to their seats - ready to learn and ready to collaborate on our new math ideas for the day. I did spy more than a few students sketching ideas for the task as we worked through new material. How often do students move in your classroom? How often do they have the chance to share ideas with peers on rich tasks? What is the "sitting at desks" vs "moving about the room" balance? Opportunities to move and play can come from many places - from online brain-teasers to number puzzles to tactile building tasks. Sara VanDerWerf's "Stand and Talk" routine leverages a culture of classroom conversation and safety to general math classroom learning. Peter Liljedahl's "Building Thinking Classrooms" provides wonderful guidance for extending this culture of conversation and collaboration to daily math learning. Find one math task for your students and get them up and moving, playing and talking! And if anyone figures out how to complete the stand/sit task...let me know... Bob Lochel
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