Exciting news! Starting January 19, I will be the new mathematics content specialist for the Colorado Department of Education (CDE). Whenever people would ask me about what kinds of jobs I might be interested in doing after grad school, I always mentioned this one or ones like it. It's a mixture of curriculum work, policy, assessment, teacher education, and communication — all the things I've focused on during my time as a graduate student. Of course, there's only one such job in the state of Colorado, so it was my good fortune that the job came open (relatively) near the end of my time as a graduate student. To help ease the transition, CDE is generously allowing me to start the job part-time while I complete work here at CU-Boulder. Thankfully, my new colleagues at CDE are well-aware of the challenges of finishing a Ph.D. and are willing to be flexible so that I can complete my degree. As educators I think we're all on the same page when it comes to helping students (even a supposedly grown-up one, like me) see their program through to the end.
What will the new job mean for this blog and my other online activities? If I have anything to say about it, the blogging, tweeting, Google-plussing, etc. will only get better. (I may even have to venture more frequently into Facebook for my professional use, as well as LinkedIn.) As a researcher (even the graduate student kind), there's a large expectation to share with others in the research community. But in this role as math specialist, I plan to make sharing of research, policy perspectives, projects and collaborations, etc. part of my full-time work, with the goal of bringing it to math educators across Colorado and beyond. I look forward to sharing more of the great work I see teachers doing, along with the hard-earned lessons we collectively learn along the way. I also look forward to bringing more transparency to a state agency. Yes, there are a few things I can't say on the job (for example, in Colorado the state doesn't tell school districts what curriculum to use), but to the extent I can keep sharing, I will!