When I found out that the RUME conference was going to be in Omaha, I was probably the only member of the GeT: A Pencil group who was excited. For me, it was a 4-hour, 235-mile trip down Interstate 29. The Embassy Suites was the perfect venue, located within walking distance of several restaurants, with a friendly staff, and a great evening happy hour! Many of us from the GeT group spent a lot of time visiting with each other during these happy hours.

The GeT Together on Wednesday started around 9 a.m. with a welcome from Pat. Then Laura and Amanda updated us on the book, and we got to see a list of accepted chapters. It was valuable to all of us that are writing chapters to see what others are writing. Then Dorin talked about his proposed chapter on the archetype work that we did in 2018-2019. I do believe that work was instrumental in getting us to the GeT Student Learning Objectives (SLOs) so I am thankful that he has gathered a team to write that chapter. Michaela from the ESLO group shared what they have been doing and some of their thoughts after discussing the first three SLOs. Engaging with Michaela, Mara, and Younggon from the ESLO group was nice. I appreciated hearing their perspective on the SLOs, especially Mara’s sharing on how she has changed her GeT course and feels that the course has improved with the addition of the SLOs.

The opportunity to split into different groups and talk about the proposed chapters in the afternoon was very useful. When you are meeting with your co-authors, everyone often has a similar perspective so getting ideas from an outside person was helpful. I think that some of the author teams made progress on their chapters. Thanks to Inese and Carolyn for all they did to organize and keep us on task!

During the Thursday morning RUME Teaching Geometry for Secondary Teachers working group, we were joined by a couple of new people interested in the GeT course. Nat started us off by showing the SLO website. We are still hoping that more people register for the Forum and share their thoughts on the SLOs there. If people join the forum and leave comments there, anyone registered for the forum can read their comments and respond.

Then Mike presented the results of a survey done by the GRIP lab, where they listed the ten SLOs, along with eleven distractor SLOs, and people had to rank them 1 through 7. The survey results are in the image at right. These survey results were very satisfying for me (and likely others in the SLO authoring team). Nine SLOs were ranked in the top ten slots. Notice that SLOs 1, 4, 2, 5, and 7 were ranked #1 at least ten times. In addition, all of the SLOs had very few #7 rankings, with SLO 2 having the most with three rankings at #7. While SLO 8 is lower in the rankings, it was only ranked #7 twice. SLO 13 was “Understand the ideas underlying advanced geometric topics in Euclidean and absolute geometry.” I feel like these survey results solidify that we were on the right track in selecting and writing the SLOs.

Thursday afternoon I was able to see some of my GeT colleagues present about the Adinkra lesson that they have been using to teach transformations in their courses. It is always great to support other colleagues in their teaching and research. In addition, Tuyin, Orly, and I presented our FullProof project, including data from both fall semesters that we have used it. While we had done a similar presentation at AMTE in New Orleans, this one had better attendance and audience interaction. The best part was seeing our GeT colleagues in the audience supporting us and asking questions. 

As a first-time attendee of RUME, I really enjoyed it. I teach the proof course at SDState so I was able to find a lot of great sessions on teaching and learning proof. Another thing that I liked about it was that it is a smaller conference, so everyone knows each other. Dinner with the GeT: A Pencil community on Thursday evening was a lot of fun. Our table was lucky enough to have Joe Cole, the magician comedian, come and show us one of his tricks. The best part of my trip to Omaha was hanging out with the GeT: A Pencil community—what an awesome group of people. This community has been wonderful for me professionally, and I have also found amazing and supportive friends!