Western Regional Noyce Conference Tuscan, AZ November 16-18th, 2012 At six thirty in the evening, two blocks away

from The University of Arizona campus in Tuscan, AZ the Western Regional Noyce Conference was off to a great start. One of the ballrooms of the Marriott University Park Hotel had been transformed into an environment fit for Noyce PI, Noyce Scholars, Noyce Alumni, and supporters of the Noyce program. The Noyce Foundation focuses primarily on improving the future teaching of math and science by awarding college students across the country with this scholarship. The Noyce Scholarship aims to help these college students to become effective math and science teachers in high needs schools. At this particular conference, participants of the Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program in the western states gathered to share, support, and learn from the many other Noyce Programs across the west. Being amongst Noyce participants from several different states was a refreshing change from the small Noyce community I am a part of at the University of Montana. Everyone attending the conference was excited about the progress of this foundation and about improving the teaching of math and science in public schools across the country. The first Keynote Speaker, Chris Impey a professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona, gave an energetic talk about scientific literacy throughout the nation. The following morning former high school science teacher Kirk Brown gave an inspirational presentation about student success. He used many of his own experiences as examples on how to become a truly effective teacher. The focus of the presentation was on showing teachers how to take advantage of opportunities available to them and translate those into opportunities for student success, as stated in the conference program. Kirk Brown believes that we as teachers have the power, and perhaps the responsibility, to teach students the skills

necessary to succeed after they graduate high school. He believes that a teacher who puts in the time and effort into becoming a successful teacher will have an extraordinary influence on the lives of his/her students. This talk resonated greatly with me. Not only was Kirk Brown an extremely polished public speaker, he provided all future teachers in the audience with what he believes are the tools to becoming a great teacher. Kirk Brown stressed that in order to have successful students we as teachers need to make them feel powerful, and the way to do this is by giving them a set of skills they can take into the world. In a sense this seems like a notion which should be second nature to all teachers, however I know from my own experience this is not always achieved in the high school setting. This made me reflect on my idea of the teacher I hope to become. More than anything the reason I want to become a teacher is to be around kids and to influence them in a positive way, allowing them to go into the world and do great things. After hearing this talk given by Kirk Brown I have a more specific idea of how I would like to accomplish this. As he pointed out, it is important to go to as many professional activities as possible throughout your career to hear about new ideas, learn from other teachers, and to make connections. Attending this Noyce Conference made me see how important this is. It is so much easier to learn about new ideas and share your own when you are in an environment packed full of people who share your same interests and passions. I hope that as a teacher I share with others what I learn and learn from other teachers about what they are doing. Another wonderful point Mr. Brown made was to focus on developing skills within your students. This could not be truer for mathematics. It makes sense that a math teacher has the responsibility to give their students the skills necessary to go on to the next course, but more importantly the responsibility to give students the critical thinking and problem solving skills

necessary to be a great student and learner. In my classroom I want my students to not simply learn how to calculate a given problem, but moreover how to use their problem solving skills to apply this in the real world. Finally the most important message I received from this talk was that as a teacher you should let your students know you are there to help them succeed, that you are human, and you make mistakes just like everyone else. My favorite and most effective teachers were the ones I knew genuinely cared about my success and wanted to do everything they could to help me get there. From an hour long speech from Kirk Brown you could see this is exactly the kind of teacher he was, and he most certainly made me want to strive to be the best educator I can be. Later that day I attended a session given by Noyce Participants from the University of Hawaii entitled Math Murder Mystery. In this session one professor and three Noyce Scholars gave a presentation outlining a day long activity they performed with students. During this activity students used mathematics and technology to solve a murder mystery. The students were given clues then were required to go through five different stations, narrowing down the suspects as they went, until they knew for sure who the killer was. In this session we were able to go through two of the stations used in the activity. The first station used distance and velocity graphs from the police compared with graphs we created with a model car and a motion detector to determine whose getaway car chase seemed suspicious. We were given a list of five suspects along with their story about how they got home that night, and then compared their story with the graphs given from their drive home. From this we were able to rule out a few suspects but still were not one hundred percent sure as to who the killer was.

The second station had us find the correlation between stride length and height to determine how tall the person whose bloody footprints were found would be. To do this we graphed several different data points, and then found a line of best fit within this graph. Finally we used our line of best fit to determine how tall someone whose stride lengths were a certain length apart would be. The students from this Noyce Program did a wonderful job showing us an example of how to show where math is used in the real world. This lesson required many different branches of mathematics, here we used distance and velocity which are frequently used in calculus and we saw algebra and statistics used to find a line of best fit. Another one of the stations they explained to us utilized geometry. This lesson could easily be adapted to many grade levels, given the appropriate circumstances and provided information. I was happy to see that these Noyce Scholars are making an effort to make math fun and exciting to students of all ages. I kept the copies they hand out to us and hope that I someday have the opportunity to use this in my classroom. The 2012 Western Regional Noyce Conference left me with many great talks and lesson plan ideas which will leave me thinking for months, maybe even years, to come. Most importantly, however, this conference gave me the opportunity to see how important it is to attend professional activities and to learn from other people within your field. I enjoyed the two and a half days I spent in Tuscan, AZ surrounded by those who are a part of this foundation which has provided me with so many great opportunities.