PreK-2 Teachers and NCTM

A few weeks ago I had the great honor of going to the NCTM Headquarters in Virginia to attend the Program Committee Meeting because I get to help plan the NCTM 2015 Regional Conference in Nashville.  It was interesting to me for lots of reasons, but two of them are still bouncing around in my head so I’m going to air my thoughts here:

Lack of PreK-2 attendance

I am stealing this image from Robert Kaplinsky’s blog.  He is on the Nashville Committee as well. I didn’t take a picture of this chart that was shown during our meeting, but once I saw it on his blog I wished I had and decided to steal it (Thanks, Robert!).  Ever since I saw it all I can think is, “Why is there such a lack of PreK-2nd attendance? Does the annual conference stats look the same? Does the membership of NCTM look the same?”

Maybe this is too stereotypical, but I know it is true for TOO MANY of the PreK-2 teachers I work with…math is not “their subject.”  They are much more inclined to teach reading than math.  I’ve had teachers tell me things like, “I’ve always hated math and I dread that part of my day.” Or even, “I went into Kindergarten so I wouldn’t have to teach math.” Tell me if I am way off base here?!?!  Is that the main reason? What other reasons do you know of for why PreK-2 teachers don’t attend NCTM Conferences?  And how do we encourage more of them to attend?  I know cost is always a factor, but some districts/grants pay for teachers to attend.  So cost aside, why aren’t they going to NCTM Conferences????  If you are a PreK-2 teacher, what would make you want to attend an NCTM Conference?

Full disclosure here…I am overseeing the PreK-2 portion of the Nashville conference.  So when I saw the stats, my heart dropped a bit.