Carroll hosted a conference for forty educators, eighteen of whom were Carroll faculty who served as master teachers, while Dr. David Stevens (Carroll’s math consultant) and Tom Harding (from the Potomac School outside of Washington, DC) provided the outside expertise.

The focus of the conference was to emphasize the role of thinking in math education. Too much of American math education is devoted to computation. When children understand the meaning within mathematical concepts, computation follows along nicely. The group observed Stevens working with Carroll Summer School children, learned the cognitive warm up activities that we’ve been using with winter school students, and began understanding the related software. This workshop is, we hope, the precursor to a larger involvement by Carroll in professional development and product development in math.