Inside a Program Supporting Black Girls Who Love Math

PHILADELPHIA — Elle Oliver knows anger. Multiplying by 12 used to make the rising sixth grader fume.

Now she’s tackling integers with relative calm. Still, confusion seems to trigger the frustration, she noticed. Bewilderment caused by a tough math problem can, like an unscratchable itch, build into irritation.

“I’m just scared to say stuff right now because I’m starting to get it wrong,” Oliver complains when struggling with a math question during a small group study session in July.

“This is a safe space,” replies a nearby adult.

Students in Oliver's elementary school become angry quickly, and it’s gotten worse over time. “I feel like, once you get older, you get more angry,” she says.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Oliver aspires to be a teacher or therapist. She wants to teach so that other students like math just as much as she does.

Learning to soothe her frustration has helped Oliver perform math. It’s important to stop, think and write problems down, she says, noting that it’s a technique her mom taught her. It helps that Oliver’s confidence in solving math problems has increased, though double-digit division can still be a hassle. (She prefers the box method for double and triple digits and the butterfly method for fractions with different denominators, she says.)

Preparing to enter middle school, Oliver is keen to learn about what it means to have letters in math: “I just want to learn that because it's really confusing,” she says.

Tucked into the fifth floor of the CIC Philadelphia — a coworking space that boasts state-of-the-art science labs for college students and bioscience startups — Oliver is one of five rising sixth and seventh graders present today, all participating in a week-long pilot program seeking to keep middle schoolers off phones and social media during the summer.

But the sessions have a loftier goal than just avoiding summer brain rot: to reverse the gender and race disparities in who studies and succeeds in math and science.

Schools seem to push girl students away from math. For instance, a study of more than 2 million first and second graders in France, published earlier this year, found that while boys and girls enter school with similar math abilities, school increases the gap in math performance between them. In the U.S. — while the gap temporarily disappeared in 2019 — the latest national testing revealed stark differences in performance between boys and girls in fourth and eighth grade, though the reasons why it reappeared aren’t entirely clear yet. And significantly more men leave college with credentials in these subjects.

But this gap isn’t inevitable.

Some education groups are working to change it. For instance, Girls Who Code tries to boost the number of women in computer science careers through its summer immersion programs.

Then there’s Black Girls Love Math, the nonprofit that hosted the pilot program that Oliver participated in this summer. Drawing inspiration from the Algebra Project and the Barack Obama Foundation’s Girls Opportunity Alliance, the group argues that math is a “superpower” for young, Black girls.

“We like to think about the ‘M’ specifically in STEM,” says Black Girls Love Math founder Atiyah Harmon, a longtime Philadelphia schoolteacher.

For Harmon, many Black girls are missing a sense of community and belonging, blocking them from pursuing these fields. She hopes to change that.

Math Girl Summer

In school, teachers often admit to disliking math. “I'm like, ‘Cringe. Why are you saying it inside of a school building?’” Harmon says.

The effect this had on students left a bad taste in her mouth when she was a middle school math teacher across a trio of public charter schools in Philadelphia and heard this sentiment from other teachers and parents. She noticed that sixth grade girls frequently raised their hands during math class, eager to flex their math muscles. By seventh or eighth grade, only a year or two later, “it became less cool.” The students’ passion and interest decreased, sometimes sharply, Harmon says.

Started in the summer of 2020 — just after the George Floyd protests began — Black Girls Love Math aims to head off this attitude shift. Bolstered by a grant of $125,000 from Pennsylvania, its programs are community focused. Run by paid contractors, there are 24-week after-school sessions as well as weekend math “slams” that run for eight weeks during the school year. They also strive to get students involved in competitions, mentorship and career exploration, which Harmon argues is crucial for showing the students what they can achieve in math.

Currently, more than 250 students attend these programs throughout the Mid-Atlantic — in Philadelphia; Camden, New Jersey; Brooklyn, New York; and Wilmington, Delaware. The fees to join in the regular yearly programs are assessed on a sliding scale and depend upon the location, but families pay around $75 to $500 per month, and the organization offers scholarships and fundraisers to help with the cost, according to Harmon.

This summer’s camp is an attempt to keep students from losing math skills between school years, when the organization’s normal programming is out of session. Harmon recruited students who haven’t yet taken algebra, a hinge moment in determining whether youth ultimately pursue lucrative and socially rewarding math and science careers.

Students start their day just after 9 a.m. with an affirmation, proclaiming their talent in math: “I am brilliant. I try my best. I am confident in my abilities. I am my sister's keeper. I love myself. I love to learn. I love to grow. I am a beautiful Black girl, and I love math.”

Then, on this particular day, they move into an exercise modeling an airplane on Kai XR, a digital learning platform. For the most part, they concentrate on the problem at hand, occasionally giggling or answering questions with a glimmer of excitement in their voices. Later, the students review lessons on measurement and data on Khan Academy, focusing on conversions.

As the day wears on, their energy level fades. A tough lesson about integers moves to after lunch, when students feel they can better focus after the meal.

During these gatherings, Harmon says, it is perhaps less important to practice math skills than to improve students’ self-perception. “We want them to see themselves as math people,” she explains.

Unlike a tutoring program, which would attempt to catch students up, these enrichment activities are proactive, nurturing students’ preexisting interest in math. That means not spoon-feeding them answers. Students need to be able to solve problems for themselves, Harmon says. In school, students are often dependent learners, so they just get lessons poured into them, Harmon says, adding: “We like to flip that.”

For example, she notes that Oliver’s frustration when she encounters a difficult problem has declined over time.

Some research among college students suggests that confidence-boosting extracurricular programs like this can narrow the gap for high-achieving students. But even men who perform poorly in subjects like physics, engineering and computer science more often major in these programs in college when compared to low-performing women. Researchers think this may indicate deeply rooted cultures that push women from these topics. And even in states that perform well on national math assessments, parents worry about their children's math abilities and seek support outside of regular school assignments.

Harmon believes her approach helps with this, pointing toward the perseverance and energy of the girls who attend her programs. Indeed, Harmon says she’s working to integrate these programs into schools to bring the “BGLM way” into the classroom. Last school year, the organization led three professional development programs to introduce teachers to their model, which emphasizes flexible number routines, collaborative problem-solving and affirmations for community building and mindset development, Harmon says.

Harmon also wants Black girls to think big about their own futures.

During these summer sessions, students take breaks from math practice to tour nearby university campuses, to see what’s possible. And one day, a couple of students tagged along when the organization lobbied Pennsylvania state representatives for additional funding. Olivia Oliver, a rising seventh grader and Elle’s sister, thought only men could be politicians. So Representative Jordan Harris, of the 186th District, arranged for the girls to tour the capitol and meet Black women who’d been elected to office.

Adding It All Up

Lizzy, a 9-year-old rising fourth grader at an all-girls private school in New York, spent some time at a free coding and dance camp this summer.

For character day, she dressed up as Christine Darden, a mathematician once involved in supersonic flight research for NASA. She’d read about Darden in a book about Black women in math and science careers.

Lizzy loves math and science, says her mother, Beatrice, who requested that EdSurge only use her first name. But she worries that her daughter’s passion could wither. “You don’t want that hunger and interest in math to disappear,” she says.

Lizzy’s friends don’t have the same interest in math. What’s more, she “attends a predominantly white institution,” which adds to the feelings of isolation and affects her self-esteem, her mother says.

So for the past couple of years, Beatrice has kept her daughter in the Black Girls Love Math enrichment program near their home in Brooklyn. They often meet on Sunday afternoons, and parents hang out in the waiting areas, swapping ideas and socializing. It’s where Beatrice learned about the free coding and dance camp that her daughter — and a number of other students from the program — participated in this summer.

For Beatrice, that connection is vital: “She's in community with girls that look like her. She's in community with teachers that look like her, and then really thinking about alignment around what their interests are.”

But has it nourished her interest in math and science?

Harmon thinks so. After all, Lizzy likes the program so much she chose to miss a close friend’s birthday party to attend the last year’s final session. Lizzy wanted to support her “sisters,” according to her mom, who adds that the BGLM Sunday Slam girls have forged a strong bond.

Besides, the families later arranged a play date in the park to make up for missing the birthday — with cupcakes.