ATM People • Phil Boorman
Phil Boorman was recently recognised by the ATM General Council for his long-standing contributions to mathematics education and made an Honorary Member of ATM. This is only the third in ATM’s history following Caleb Gattegno and Trevor Fletcher.
Here are some of the things that members have said about him.
- A Short History of Phil Boorman
- A way of making everyone work in their own way...
- We did all kinds of things with them...
- “Oh”, he said, with a twinkle in his eye
- And he has been running the workshop ever since...
- Only a radiator would jump in the river to save another radiator...
- A seedy and eerily empty filling station
- Phil Boorman Honorary Member of Polish ATM
- There must be many maths teachers who have a lot to thank Phil for...
- The use and misuse of language
- He is quintessentially ATM
- There he is! Follow him to the left
<< Add your comments about Phil Boorman
A Short History of Phil Boorman
I have probably known Phil longer than anyone else in ATM, since he was my head of department from 1957 to 1960. Those who heard his opening lecture at the 1997 conference in Oxford may remember his hilarious accounts of those carefree days in a secondary modern school. My other claim on Phil is that I introduced him to ATM, since as a farewell gift when I left I gave him a year’s subscription.
Phil stayed on at the school for some years, and claimed to have spent more time running the school orchestra than running the mathematics department. His interest in music later surfaced in a seminar at the 1981 conference in Lancaster on “The orchestration of mathematics for the classroom&rdsquo;, for which the description read: "... treating the teaching of mathematics like the teaching of music, not as a matter of rules and exercises but as a communal activity in which all may take part whatever their skills and interests."
His contributions to seminars began earlier, and other titles reflect his interest in the use of materials and puzzles in teaching mathematics: "After the geoboard what? Dotty paper!" (1969, Padgate), “Puzzles plus&rdsquo; (1986, Lancaster), “Puzzles in the classroom&rdsquo; (1987, Northampton), “Making the best use of classroom materials&rdsquo; (with Keith Windsor, 1990).
As I said, he has been organising the annual workshop since 1990, supplying most of the materials from home. He seems happiest there, always working on new ideas and continually discussing with visitors the role of materials in the teaching of mathematics.
David Fielker
A way of making everyone work in their own way...
I did not find the workshop at my first ATM conference it must have been too far from the bar! No, not really, I was actually like most first-timers trying not to be too conspicuous creeping around the edges of groups of well acquainted old-hand delegates chatting away.
When I discovered the workshop and, more importantly Phil, at my second conference I really knew that I had to keep coming back. Phil has a way of making everyone work at mathematics in their own way at their own level and to make it an even better pastime than socialising in the bar. He has so many stories to tell about pupils and their mathematics and which have enriched my own feelings about pupils I have known.
The world moves on but pupils don’t change much. They will always need the dedication, encouragement and care from teachers like Phil. If only we could all be like him. His address at the close of the 1997 conference will be remembered as one of the best and most moving endings to our Easter conference.
Heather McLeay
We did all kinds of things with them...
My first recollection of meeting Phil was at an Easter conference many years ago. I attended his seminar entitled, I think, Pentominoes. We found them, made them, and then did all kinds of things with them.
Phil mentioned the book by Solomon W Golomb: Polyominoes - the fascinating new creation in mathematics. At the coffee break I went to the bookshop and bought a copy. It cost 30 shillings, so we are going back to old money. Phil still accuses me of buying the last copy in the UK. This was a ‘best buy’ for me as it provided a lot of inspiration for classroom activities, including aspects of proof.
On the flyleaf it says that: “Polyominoes not only provided entertainment, they are a way to learn more about mathematics”. How I have cringed when I have been in classrooms where pupils have been asked to ‘Find the 12 pentominoes’ and nobody questions why there are 12. What lost opportunities. This is not about learning mathematics - and not what I believe Phil has been and is about.
I am grateful for his inspiration over the years, especially in relation to spatial things and 3-D in particular. It was great that Phil was able to come to Lancashire for the Research Day and to share with some of us in a very enjoyable Italian meal the evening before.
Kath Cross
“Oh”, he said, with a twinkle in his eye
For me the workshop has always been at the heart of my experience of ATM Easter Course. When I think about Phil I always bring to mind a conversation that I had with him when I had been teaching for about ten years. I had really enjoyed my teaching that year and arrived at conference all energy, making for the workshop and saying to Phil that at last I really thought I’d made it. I could teach now. He looked at me smiling and asked me how long I’d been teaching. “Ten years” I said. “Oh”, he said, with a twinkle in his eye, it was after ten years that I had just about found the questions that I needed to work on.
If I had stayed in the mindset of that moment I think I would have stopped working at teaching and, yes, there was still so much to learn, and still is.
One more image is from Phil’s closing lecture that I use for myself in classrooms when I am teaching and mention to student teachers. “Teaching has felt like sitting at the top of a mountain throwing down boulders to those below to help them to climb.” I suppose that when Phil answered me all those years ago he was throwing down a boulder. I thank Phil deeply from heart for doing it.
Laurinda Brown
And he has been running the workshop ever since...
The first record I have of a workshop was at the Padgate conference in 1969. This was organised by Geoff Giles, who wrote to several people beforehand asking them to provide materials: "I am anxious that we should have a stimulating collection of provocative materials for people to see and work with in the mathematics workshop(s)." He added, "As in previous years these will come from various sources," so there must have been something similar earlier, but the 1968 programme only gives the timetable of events and nothing more.
The 1969 workshop may have been a first, however, since it was apparently felt necessary to give some direction towards it. "... 12 sessions are all devoted to activity groups. Of these 12 sessions conference members are asked to opt for only 6 thus leaving themselves 6 sessions free to visit the various workshops and exhibitions, talk or just relax!"
In 1971 (Lancaster) there was more structure, with two evening sessions set aside for “Free activities, workshops, films, informal groups&rdsquo;. There were now two separate workshops. Marion Walter ran one with materials focusing on links between mathematics and art, and I ran the other on mathematical games. One of the seminars, conducted by Cyril Edwards, was on "Investigating the Workshop: a consideration of the workshop as a vehicle for improved teaching."
The following year (Exeter) there was yet more structure, with time-tabled choice of three workshops on Mathematical Games, Working with Materials and Working with Film. Each had three sessions: (i) a mini-lecture; (ii) observation of work with children, (iii) members work on their own or with children.
After that the conference organisers were content merely to provide workshops and allow members to make their own choices. Usually there was just the one, but in 1974 (Nottingham) there was one in which Alistair McIntosh supplied apparatus and a second in which I repeated the provision of games; and in 1975 (Lancaster) Alistair’s and mine were joined by Marion’s on art/mathematics materials.
Thereafter there was just the one workshop each year, more or less combining the three types of materials. These were organised by small teams of people, each team running for two to three years.
Phil Boorman took over in 1990 (Northampton), and he has been running the workshop ever since, with a team that has mainly included Margaret Jones and Keith Windsor, with Sue Brown joining them since 2002 (Ormskirk).
David Fielker
Only a radiator would jump in the river to save another radiator...
I didn’t really know what to expect the first time I attended ATM Easter conference. Although I had started my career teaching Mathematics, and had joined ATM, I had already been teaching chemistry for some years, and kept up my membership because I enjoyed reading MT. It wasn’t long before I found the Workshop, and met Phil.
Phil believes that people who are interested in mathematics are interested in just about anything, because what really interests them is patterns, of any kind. Certainly we have had conversations about just about anything: teaching (of course); music, including tips on freeing jammed trumpet slides with a towel and a radiator; bookbinding; religion; how only a radiator would jump in the river to save another radiator (radiators seem to feature quite often); the narcotic effects of acetone; changes in the properties of Evostik; pacifism; sculpture.
Mathematical topics included dissections of the cube (Phil has an extensive collection of models of dissected cubes); angles (I had a disagreement with a referee when I insisted on measuring angles as fractions of a turn, after Phil convinced me that it made more sense - I still think he’s right); area as an amount of paint (see MT117 p.30 for an unusual application of this idea); Boorman’s patent elastic ruler; approximating fractions by paper-folding.
I can also blame Phil for significant sleep deprivation, and I have to admit that I am catching his habit of persuading people to embark on time-consuming activities late at night. I remember once, about one in the morning, we were discussing dissection puzzles, and he handed me a box. Like a fool I opened it, and pieces fell out, all over the table. “Oh dear&rdsquo;, he said, "you’ll have to put them back, now." There were three layers of pieces, and the puzzle was to make the letters ATM. It is not easy. Neither is putting the pieces back.
Paul Gailiunas
A seedy and eerily empty filling station
Memory is notoriously selective and unreliable... I am not sure who said this or why but... I suppose I have known Phil since joining ATM. And whenever I have been to conference I recall going and talking with him, be it in Lancaster, Avery Hill, St. John’s - York or wherever.
And, certain memories do stick out above the rest.
Phil and the workshop...
Very early on, I joined a seminar (with George K. and Rod B.) - on the edge of the workshop. We had been invited to work on card games and how they could be meaningfully used to access some mathematics.
In pairs we selected from the playing cards 1 to 9. Whoever had at least three of the cards that totalled 15 had won the round… later we analysed the game and thus we were introduced to the world of Magic Squares.
At the time, this was much more exciting than Durell or Raven and Ault that we were currently using. What we had seen would better motivate our pupils back in school!
After that, memories begin to merge as year on year at conference I would gravitate to the workshop late at night, always after the bar had closed. There I would be guaranteed a bottle opener, often some beer or wine but always an endless supply of coffee and biscuits. Which was just what the regular night owls required. And always some new resource Phil was getting excited about. The conversations we had were fuelled by caffeine or alcohol and whatever was happening to us back in our classrooms! Sound advice was always available - provided you gave good argument in return and could validate your points of view.
Later on down the years my visits to the workshop were mandatory - there was always some new ideas, some new materials and always his gorgeous books to read and make notes about. This year was no exception. T bag patterns still stick in my mind more than most and I really must get my own copy of Proof without Words Volume 1.
Inevitably, whatever the time, wherever the place there would always be time for a serious conversation with him. Had I seen this? Heard about that? Tried the other? Always challenging, always questioning, always pushing the envelope of what we were doing.
Phil and Poland...
The plan had been to drive to Poland and join the third annual conference of SNM. Complex arrangements to ‘convoy’ our way from England to Poznan via Harwich and Hamburg all had the hallmarks of a military manoeuvre.
I was to collect Phil from Gloucester - where I discovered the real power behind the throne - Mick his wife. She had prepared enough rations to cater for us ALL - there and back. And that was after insisting that we had an enormous but delicious meal under our belts before we left on the first leg of our sojourn.
After hosting him overnight in Gamlingay, we journeyed onto Harwich were he would be transferred to the Punto of Potworowski, but only if the headlights flashed three times. It was here that we discovered Phil’s quirk!
As we busied ourselves with passports and paperwork for the computers we were carrying and the line of traffic had started up the ramp... where was Phil? Not in the café, or the loos... but wandering around the car park extremities looking at the mathematics in the architecture. We had lost our slot in the queue but eventually we embarked and felt certain that that would be the end of our anxieties. Surely, there was no way of losing him once on board surely!
Before docking at Hamburg we had lost him three times more - when attempts to meet up had been thwarted or delayed while he had busied himself in the Pursars office or the wrong cafeteria or bar or asleep in his berth...
Likewise the journey from Hamburg to Poznan was not without hitch... and always it was Phil absenting himself at the crucial time. The last time at a seedy, dimly lit and eerily empty filling station just before the German-Polish border was perhaps the most worrying!
But get him to Poznan we did and from that point on the legend of Boorman and his workshop really begins...
In retrospect it is appropriate to thank him for all the professional insights past on, the many ideas, the valued resources he shared and my early introduction to Lagavulin, the latter resulting in an abiding passion for malt whisky. Now a dram seldom passes my lips without me remembering Phil lost again this time in the duty free shop and sharing the bargain he had just bought. Slainte Mhor!
Many thanks you old devil…and congratulations on becoming a valued honorary member of ATM.
Lyndon Baker
Phil Boorman Honorary Member of Polish ATM
WZ: At the Xth Meeting of Polish ATM Phil Boorman and Margaret Jones were elected Honorary Members of our Association. It was in Wisla, in 2001. I first met Phil, as I remember, in 1980. It was probably in Lancaster Easter Conference. I was then a visiting professor in Bielefeld University, in Germany, and it was Bauersfeld who told me “You must go to ATM meeting. There you will see people really dedicated to new style of thinking and acting in maths education&rdsquo;. I knew he was right, and the decision was immediate. At the nearest Easter Conference, I was there. The most interesting place of the Conference was The Workshop, the gadgets and people hanging around all day and night and talking and doing things.
KB: My first meeting with Phil was in 1991, and it was first of all a meeting with The Workshop of His, the unique atmosphere he created in it. It was only the year later that I realized that the key figure of The Workshop was Phil. He was always sitting aside and doing something, not disturbing others. He could see everything around him and was ready to help when needed. When I was attracted by some puzzles and was ready with them, he immediately suggested something more in that style, almost without a word...
JB: I met him first in 1992. It was Kasia who showed me the way directly to The Workshop. I realized that this was to me the most interesting place indeed at the whole Conference. I was at that time an academic teacher interested, that’s true, in teaching teachers and making models for enhancing spatial imagination and active approach. The more unusual to me it was, what I saw in The Workshop. Then, and a year later, I spent as much time each day as I could in The Workshop, talking to Phil and many others, taking advantage that it was the central place for meeting such people as Geoff Giles, Adrian Pinel, and Marion Walter.
WZ: That time was the early years of Polish ATM, Jan Potworowski and me were coordinators of the Tempus Project “Recursion&rdsquo;, aiming at helping Polish maths teachers. We wanted to implant the atmosphere and character of ATM and in particular The Workshop at our Annual Conferences. Phil and Margaret came first to Poland in 1994. The Conference was in Poznan. They came with the full lorry of different materials and even more ideas, attracting several hundreds of maths teachers. As the Pied Piper, they have lead many of them for sure into the deep river of a very specific style of active mathematics.
KB: In Poznan, we were also local organizers, myself, Janek Baranowski, and Wojtek Rzewuski, and Phil made us full partners.
JB: Next time he came with his Workshop in 1995, to Lodz. For many of us, it was a long expected visit. People came with some ideas of there own, maybe not yet mature, and they wanted to join in. Attracted by the Phil’s way of acting, they were the first group of people, the kernel that initiated later the working group of Polish ATM, called “Around the Clock Workshop&rdsquo;, “Pracownia Cal’odobowa&rdsquo;.
WZ: You were the leader of that group, and “Pracownia Cal’odobowa&rdsquo; is now a well-established very active Working Group of Polish ATM, and since then, one of the main attraction of every Polish ATM Conference.
KB: We were very anxious about the next year, what will happen, when Phil and Margaret were not able to show up at our Conference?
JB: Then, the group took over. It was like letting us to jump into the deep sea. But it worked. The main idea of the English style Workshop was there, still but with different people, different materials, and different expectations. It was of course impossible to imitate fully Phil and Margaret but we tried. Their ideas are still there, and we hope it is not too far apart from the original.
WZ: We will remember Phil and Margaret in Poland. They were elected honorary members of SNM (Polish ATM) unanimously.
KB: We still expect them to come to us.
Kasia Burnicka, Janek Baranowski, Wacek Zawadowski
There must be many maths teachers who have a lot to thank Phil for...
There are moments since I first started working in the workshop with Phil that stand out for me as examples of how he inspired and supported my maths and my clown.
In 1993, Hattie Maths was beginning to emerge. The theme of the conference at Cheltenham was “Maths is Magic&rdsquo;. Phil showed me all sorts of tricks and puzzles including his selection of carved wooden puzzles and a number of neat little paper folding tricks that I could use when in clown. It was Phil who first showed me about creasing ellipses from a circle and estimating fractions using a strip of paper.
When he gave the closing lecture at a later conference, he told us how, in his secondary days he sometimes used to put several classes together to teach them in a large group, thus helping the teachers as well. This came to be the way I work in schools with Hattie.
The workshop is central to the conference and Phil has been central in the way the workshop has developed its style. There must be many maths teachers like me who have a lot to thank Phil for.
Sue Brown
The use and misuse of language
In the 34 years I have known him he has astounded me with his creativity, amazed me with his ability to communicate ideas and encouraged me to solve problems with patience and persistence.
In every serious discussion and debate Phil will introduce an element of fun, a unique sense of humour based on the use and misuse of language, clearly linked to his ability to think laterally.
With lifelong experience of learning and teaching Phil is still challenging the mathematical thinking of everyone he meets.
Keith Windsor
He is quintessentially ATM
I have been involved with the running of the workshop at conference since 1993. Phil has been the leading member of the team – the one with the new ideas, provoking continuous dialogue focused on improving how we work with learners of mathematics. He is quintessentially ATM and represents its vision. A number of people have offered reminiscences of Phil and throughout these accounts runs a thread recognising his inspiration and dedication to the teaching of mathematics and the ideals of ATM.
Margaret Jones
There he is! Follow him to the left
He had vanished again. In a dark winter’s evening in a small dreary East German town Phil had gone walking again. We were on the way to the winter conference of the Polish ATM. There was David Cain, Lyndon Baker, Margaret Jones, Chopper Harris and Phil with a van load of maths workshop stuff. Every time we stopped Phil would take off to explore and we would run up and down the cobbled streets looking for him. We were in a convoy of two cars which found it impossible to stay together, David led in a white Citroen.
“Phil, keep your eyes on that car. Don’t lose it.”
In a crush of horse carts and tractors we lost David for a brief moment.
“There he is! Follow him to the left” shouted Phil.
We followed and after an hour we caught up with the white Citroen.
“Good grief" said Margaret, “I didn’t know that David’s car was registered in Poland.”
Damn, the wrong Citroen. Eventually we did arrive and Phil set up his workshop.
That was 12 years ago and wherever the Polish ATM has its annual conference there you will find Phil’s workshop.
His kindly genius reached out to the Polish teachers and they responded wholeheartedly. Phil stamped his vision of maths education on men and women who understood not a word of English. He did not preach or cajole, he just did what he always has done: create excitement and challenge out of the simplest of patterns. Without a word of Polish he communicated himself, his way of being with mathematics in a way which spoke directly and very effectively to the Polish teachers.
To affect change across such a wide cultural divide is a remarkable achievement. To do it in such a short span of time is extraordinary. It is as if he spent his whole life for this moment and he chose his moment well, a historic moment when the whole Polish nation sought change. Thank you Phil for contributing to those heady days.
Jan Potworowski
<< Add your comments about Phil Boorman
More ATM people
See also
