Happy holiday season, AMTE!  I hope the close to the fall semester finds you in good spirits, and not too buried in mountains of student feedback to provide, papers to revise, and editorial reviews to return before their deadline.  I’m sure like me, you are looking forward to a bit of a break from the usual pace during the winter holidays, and that you can find opportunities to rest and renew.

As we think about renewal, AMTE is pleased to welcome the newest three members to the board, President-Elect Megan Burton, Secretary Cynthia Taylor, and Board Member-at-Large Marrielle Myers. We are very much looking forward to your energy and new ideas on the board!  My thanks also to Bethany Noblitt, Nicole Bannister, Courtney Koestler, and Farshid Safi for being willing to serve on the AMTE board, and to all of our members who took the time to learn about the candidates and vote.  I’d also like to recognize the fine work of the Nominations and Elections Committee, led by AVP Toya Frank, along with Immediate Past President Randy Philipp, Executive Director Tim Hendrix, and AVP for Web Development Joe Champion for their important roles in the election efforts.

Now is also a great time for renewal of your membership!  For those of you who we will see in Phoenix in a few short weeks, you likely renewed your membership when you registered for the conference.  (And thank you!) If you’re not able to attend this year, we will miss you, but we also want to keep you connected to our AMTE community.  Make sure you get the most of what AMTE has to offer by keeping your membership current.

I sometimes get questions about what the board does from day to day and month to month.  In the remainder of this column, I’m going to share with you a few things we’ve worked on recently and what’s coming up that you’ll see in Phoenix and beyond.  Each fall, the Board holds an annual fall retreat, in which we come together for two days to work on pressing issues to keep AMTE moving forward as an organization.  This fall, we spent time looking at our restructured financial reports, discussing membership benefits alongside our membership and conference costs, brainstorming new ways for our committees and leaders to work effectively across divisions, expanding our membership reach to voices that have not been at the table, and beginning a long-term strategic planning process for the organization.

Pursuant to strategic planning, we are excited to engage our membership in listening to their needs, wants, and aspirations for AMTE as a part of our strategic planning process.  Throughout the 2020 conference in Phoenix, and following the conference electronically, we will be providing our members the opportunity to express their thoughts about the future of AMTE.  Some opportunities will be focused on specific initiatives and goals, while others will be more general open forums for reflections and creative new ideas.  We are committed to hearing what your needs are as our members, and figuring out how to build our organization for years to come in ways that will best support those needs.

My call to service for you this quarter is to think about new and different ways in which AMTE can better serve you and our field of mathematics teacher education more broadly.  Whether it is in a formal setting or as a conversation or email to me or a board member, we welcome your creative, energetic ideas for what AMTE could be going forward. I look forward to seeing many of you in Phoenix in February, and hearing from others in our digital interactive spaces throughout the next three months.

Yours in service,

Mike