I’m reading The Algebra Project: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project by Robert Moses and Charles Cobb. I’m only a little more than half-way through it, but it really has me thinking. Robert Moses was/is a Civil Rights activist, working to register voters in the Mississippi Delta in the early 1960s, and (I’m skipping quite a lot of time here) later in life, founded The Algebra Project – a project dedicated to helping black — and other disempowered — youth learn higher level math – specifically Algebra – in middle school. His theory is that math literacy is the key to both higher education and the ability to be a fully invested citizen in today’s world.

Interestingly, he also believes that the key to doing this is through experiential learning and community organizing. The first third of the book is about the struggle for civil rights, primarily through the struggle of registering voters, in Mississippi in the early 1960s. It is a fascinating and compelling read about that differs from much of the traditional narrative of the Civil Rights Movement, in that this is not a "great person" narrative, but a "great people" narrative. (And he discusses the differing opinions between SCLC and SNCC around that very idea.) His is the story of Ella Baker and Amzie Moore and of hundreds of students and sharecroppers who came together to create change in the face of overwhelming opposition. He writes about how a good deal of the most daring work of the Civil Rights Movement was done by students who had the energy and unwillingness to compromise that older activists did not always possess.

This is important, both because the story of the Civil Rights movement should not be forgotten, but also because of the lessons he learned as a community organizer who was deeply invested – even as an initial "outsider" from the North – in the communities and people he encountered. He was changed by the experiences he had, not just because of the dangers he faced, but because he saw thousands of "ordinary" African-Americans in Mississippi find their voices and work to challenge and change the injustices they saw. He speaks to the need to listen as deeply as we talk, and he speaks to a humility that allows all voices to be valued.

That is important, because nearly twenty years later, that formed the core beliefs around math education. What is so powerful about the first 120 pages of the book — and about the second part of the book — the formation of the Algebra Project, is that it is not the telling of a proscribed curriculum, but rather presents the challenge of creating a project that can be scaled beyond its original walls while still being a project dedicated to listening. Moses and his organization empower students and parents and teachers to talk and listen to each other as they learn together. They listen to the needs of the communities they serve while also working to further the idea that math literacy is a language everyone can speak when the conceptual ideas – not just the rules of math – are communicated in a way that resonates with our day to day lives.

Beyond math, the other voice that is resonating with me in this text is how important it is to empower students and parents to have a say in their schools. I just had a meeting with a parent who wants to do more strategic planning about how to strengthen SLA within the larger community. How many parents have ideas about the school that remain untapped because they don’t think they can call me to just schedule a time to talk? What are we losing because we haven’t figured out how to get more and more parents to come into school to talk about their visions for the school community? And yes, I am proud of the level of parent involvement and parent input at SLA, but I want it to be greater. I want to figure out – as Bob Moses has – how to listen more deeply to the ideas of the parents. (As an aside, yes, I want to make sure we are listening to students deeply. I think, currently, we do that better than we do with parents.)

We are already planning a 9th grade tech workshop that will coincide with the handing out of the laptops. I think we need monthly – if not more often – meetings with me where parents can come to talk, not in a formal setting, but in the library…. and not to talk just to me, but to talk to each other. Much like the session at ISTE, where I was reminded of how much expertise is in our schools that remains untapped because schools don’t always ask teachers what they dream for their schools, so should we remember to ask parents what their ideas are. We’ve been moving more and more in that direction at SLA, reading The Algebra Project is reminding me of how imperative that goal really is.

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