President's Message

Greetings SCCTM Members, Sponsors, Colleagues, and Friends!

It is an exciting time for math educators in South Carolina, and I am humbly honored to serve as the President of SCCTM, representing the exceptional educators throughout our State! I have served as VP-Middle Schools, Nominating Chair, and President-Elect for SCCTM. My work with the SCCTM began when I served as an SCCTM Fellow, and I’ve continued volunteering and committing myself to the vision of SCCTM over the last eight years. During my time working with SCCTM, I have, also, been a leading voice with developing our SCCTM Ambassadors initiative to work to ensure that we are reaching educators in every corner of our State.

As we look forward to the coming year, I am excited about our opportunities to learn and grow together as we explore the newly adopted 2023 SCCCR Math Standards. If we embrace this as a joint effort, I am confident that we will see improvements in student math performance in the coming years. With this in mind, I am encouraged and excited about the continued growth in attendance at our annual conference. This means that we are beginning to reach more educators, instructional leaders, school administrators, and district administrators in our efforts to improve math education. In addition, we are excited about the growth we are seeing with the number of vendors and supporters of SCCTM.

It is critically important that I thank those who paved the way for the continued growth of SCCTM, so I would like to thank our immediate Past President, Alisa Hobgood, and all Past Presidents who have served prior to my service. In addition, I want to thank our Executive Director, Cindy Parker, who continues to serve with the greatest level of fervor and humility.

 

Currently, I, also, serve as the President-Elect for the South Carolina Leaders of Mathematics Education (SCLME), and I am eager to begin the process of developing a closer relationship between this group in SCCTM. Again, we are better together, and together, we can truly transform math education across our state. I am truly motivated and encouraged about what lies ahead. I am even more encouraged as I continue to work with math educators and leaders across the state and witness the commitment to personal and collective development, so we can all honor our primary goal – presenting and doing what’s best for children!

It is my hope that we all take a moment to reflect on what is going well in our schools, districts, and state, and we celebrate those small accomplishments. While doing so, it is my hope that we take up the banner of supporting each other as we navigate the shifts in the math standards and begin developing and building a new climate and culture where students embrace mathematics, are engaged fully in math classrooms, and achieve academic success because they have mastered the standards presented to them. We can only accomplish this if we are willing to share our experiences and expertise! In so doing, we invite you to contribute to our publication, the MathMate. In addition, we invite you to submit a proposal to present at our annual conference, sign up to be a SCCTM Ambassador, volunteer to chair one of our committees or support at the conference, or accept a nomination to become an officer of SCCTM. Please know that everything you do has the potential to encourage, empower, or elevate other mathematics educators in our state.

It gives me great joy to experience the continued successes of SCCTM over the last few years. We remain committed to the mission of SCCTM as we act to support quality mathematics teaching by advocating at the state level for SC educators and students, providing opportunities for leadership, professional development, and networking, and encouraging the creation of research-based curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Over the next year, we will seek opportunities to increase exposure to state-level professional development opportunities and to increase networking opportunities for members.

Special thanks to all of our members, the SCDE, and sponsors for helping to develop a professional community of support for all mathematics educators. Thank you, all, for your continued commitment and support of SCCTM and the work that we will continue to do for mathematics educators in SC.

Educationally yours,

Eugene Bellamy, Jr.,

President, SCCTM