Happy October 2026! As the school year hits its full stride and the leaves begin to turn, we are thrilled to bring you a month dedicated to fostering deep curiosity and meaningful connections. This month, our focus shifts toward making the math classroom a place where every student feels they belong and every data point tells a story.
Coming this month on the blog
- Conference Season: Sharing, Learning, and Connecting Through Mathematics : Explore how simple, low-stakes prompts can transform passive learners into active mathematical investigators: Dustin has a busy conference season this year and is delivering several session at NCSM, NCTM, AMTNYS, and ATMNYC throughout the months of October and November.
- Classroom routines to promote data literacy: Learn small, daily habits that build your students' confidence in reading, interpreting, and questioning the data they see every day. Join Dustin for an NCTM Webinar on October 22, 2026 at 7PM EST.
- Activities for the statistics classroom this October: Get seasonal with ready-to-use datasets and activities that explore spooky trends and autumnal patterns.
- Creating belonging in the math classroom through social justice: Discover how to integrate social justice themes to make mathematics a tool for empowerment and community building.
2026 Conference Season is Here!
Conference season is here, and I’m excited to be sharing ideas, learning alongside colleagues, and connecting with math educators at NCSM, NCTM, AMTNYS, and AMTNYC. This year’s sessions focus on student agency, data literacy, meaningful tasks, and creating more engaging and equitable mathematics experiences.
📊 NCSM | October 26–28 | Denver, CO
Data Stories for Justice — Explore how students can use data science to investigate meaningful questions about their communities, analyze authentic data, and communicate stories that elevate their voice and agency.
🔎 NCTM | October 28–31 | Denver, CO
Exploring Classroom Resources for New Members — Discover practical ways to find and use NCTM’s collection of high-quality classroom resources for new members.
Notice & Wonder Secondary — Explore ready-to-use strategies for using Notice and Wonder to spark curiosity, mathematical thinking, and meaningful discourse with middle and high school students.
Exploring Classroom Resources for New Members — Discover practical ways to find and use NCTM’s collection of high-quality classroom resources for experienced members.
📈 AMTNYS | November 6–7 | Albany, NY
Humanizing Data — Explore authentic data investigations, storytelling, and discourse-rich routines that help all learners become confident data thinkers.
Transformative Math Tasks — Rethink traditional math problems and explore how richer tasks can promote reasoning, productive struggle, collaboration, and student voice.
🧮 AMTNYC | November 21 | New York City, NY
Transformative Math Tasks — Continue the conversation around designing meaningful middle and high school math experiences that position students as thinkers, problem-solvers, and capable mathematicians.There’s a lot packed into this conference season, and I’d love to share more about what I’m presenting, why these topics matter, and the ideas I hope to bring back from each conference.
👉 Want a closer look at each session? Read the full blog post to learn more about each session, and visit https://www.dustinpurdy.com/professional-speaking for session resources.
Resources worth a look
- Slow Reveal Graphs: A fantastic instructional routine that promotes data literacy and curiosity by peeling back layers of information one at a time.
- NYT - What's Going On in This Graph?: A collection of New York Times math lessons and activities designed to engage students in exploring real-world mathematics through inquiry, problem-solving, and discussion.
- Data Talks: YouCubed’s Data Talks offer engaging visual data prompts that spark curiosity, encourage mathematical discourse, and help students make sense of data through conversation and reasoning.
- Spurious Correlations: Tyler Vigen’s Spurious Correlations explores surprising statistical relationships that demonstrate why correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
Last month on the blog
Here is a recap of what happened on the blog in September.
- Beyond the Graph: Building Data Literacy Through Classroom Routines: The Beyond the Graph webinar was announced and this month Dustin will share classroom routines, meaningful data sets, and NCTM resources that help educators build students’ data literacy, critical thinking, and ability to make sense of the world through data.
- Hispanic Heritage Month 2026: Together We are More: Hispanic Heritage Month celebrated the rich histories, cultures, voices, and contributions of Hispanic and Latino communities while encouraging our Dwight Global community to learn, connect, and roar together with pride, belonging, and purpose.
- AI-Resistant Authentic Learning Experiences: Creating Meaningful Learning Experiences in the Age of AI: The Teacher Talks session explored how educators can design AI-resistant, authentic learning experiences that prioritize student thinking, creativity, voice, and meaningful demonstrations of learning in an AI-rich world.
