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Affiliated with the Center since 2003, the Algebra Project is a nationwide network of teachers and students that works with mathematics as the “new Civil Right.” Moses is an elder of the Civil Rights Movement , helping organize Mississippi sharecroppers in the 1960’s. He says the need to improve math education is just as urgent as the political fight was a generation ago. Black children may not be doomed to work the fields anymore, but they’re still shackled to a “sharecropper education” of low expectations.
The AP curriculum, designed for grades four through eight, makes math accessible by basing it on “physical events” that students translate into conversational “people talk” and finally mathematical expressions. So a ride on a bus going east and then west turns into a lesson about combining positive and negative integers. Making lemonade of varying concentrations gets translated into the abstraction of ratio. And listening to the beat of an African drum sheds light on concepts like pattern and surface area. “It’s an ancient, preeducational way of learning, which is sort of about trying something, thinking about it, and making improvements,” Moses says.
AP has several active components in Miami:
Miami Dade County Public Schools
Dr. Moses has adopted a class of 20 students at Miami Edison Senior High in Little Haiti for implementation of the Algebra Project curriculum. He will work with the students over the course of their four years in high school. His goal is to guide them in rising from the lowest quartile in academic achievement to the very highest achievement in math, an accomplishment that will lay the foundation for the students’ entry into college. Using graphing calculators and the hands-on strategies of the Algebra Project, Moses will work with the students everyday for ninety minutes. Beyond math, Moses and the cohort plan to present results of the Algebra Project work to both the research and local communities. Moses has spent the last seven years implementing a similar program at Lanier High School in Jackson, Mississippi with impressive and well-documented success.
Miami Dade College
In Fall 2007, Moses began co-teaching and –designing a developmental math course at the Miami Dade College InterAmerican Campus (IAC) in Little Havana. He has been working with Dr. Jermaine Brown, chair of IAC’s mathematics department. Moses and Brown hope to invite other faculty and students from both FIU and MDC to learn firsthand about the strategies of the Algebra Project and issues surrounding urban education while the MDC students receive high quality preparation for their college math courses.
Summer Institute
Co-sponsored by The Center, the Algebra Project and the Young People’s Project, this annual retreat offers an intensive series of courses for AP students in Miami designed to help them prepare for college. The courses, which meet for six weeks, include mathematics, communications, college survival skills, psychology for personal growth, and several electives like Spanish immersion and physical education. Some of these AP students plan to attend Florida International University, and the Institute serves as a bridge to life on campus and in South Florida.
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