Raising the Floor: Algebra Project National Conference
schedule : workshop abstracts : workshop facilitators
Workshop Facilitators
Born and raised in New Orleans, Michael Molina is an author, educator, performer and public policy advocate. After graduating Xavier University of Louisiana and attaining a law degree from Yale Law, where he helped organize and facilitate the work of numerous local youth empowerment projects including UMOJA International, Michael was a state-wide policy advocate and lead organizer for the Books Not Bars project where he was responsible for facilitating grassroots organizing, planning popular education trainings and events, coordinating media and legislative advocacy, and developing research documents and outreach materials. Michael then designed the curriculum for and spent two years as facilitator of the ROOTS project of Balboa High School, San Francisco, which facilitates high school student's personal and leadership development through creative writing and performance. Michael is a nationally recognized performer, public speaker, and published author of the novel The Second Line ( www.secondlinebook.blogspot.com ) now residing in Atlanta, Ga and currently serves as National Coordinator of Quality Public School Education as a Civil Right ( www.qecr.org ).
Jessy Molina graduated from Harvard College in 1999 and from Yale Law School in 2002. Upon graduation from law school, Jessy accepted a Soros Justice Fellowship to work at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on the Books Not Bars project, with the goal of shifting state funding priorities away from incarceration and toward education and youth opportunities. After completing her fellowship, Jessy worked for the John Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University. As Program Director for the Gardner Center's West Oakland youth initiative, she worked with high school students at McClymonds High School in Oakland to develop and implement a youth-led social justice curriculum. Jessy currently serves as National Co-Coordinator of Quality Education as a Constitutional Right (www.qecr.org), along with her husband, Michael Molina. Jessy enjoys learning from and with the young people she works with, especially her daughter, Maya.
In his young adult life, Dr. Robert (Bob) Moses was a pivotal organizer for the civil rights movement as field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was director of SNCC's Mississippi Project. He was a driving force behind the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 in organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the Mississippi regulars at the 1964 Democratic Convention. From 1969-1976, he worked for the Ministry of Education in Tanzania, East Africa, where he was chairperson of the math department at the Samé school. Dr. Moses returned to the USA in 1976 to continue to pursue doctoral studies in Philosophy at Harvard. A MacArthur Foundation Fellow from 1982-87, Dr. Moses used his fellowship to develop the concept for the Algebra Project, wherein mathematics literacy in today's information age is as important to educational access and citizenship for inner city and rural poor middle and high school students as the right to vote was to political access and citizenship for sharecroppers and day laborers in Mississippi in the 1960s. As founder and president of the Algebra Project Inc., Dr. Moses also serves as director of the project's materials development program. See more at www.algebra.org . Together with Algebra Project Inc. board member Danny Glover, Moses and others recently launched a national discussion calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution for Quality Public School Education as a Civil Right; see more at www.qecr.org . Dr. Moses has received several college and university honorary degrees and honors, including the Heinz Award for the Human Condition and the Nation/Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship.
Melissa Noelle Green is a dynamic and creative educational leader who is recognized as one of the northwest's culturally astute and inspiring word artists. She was born in Seattle, Washington and raised in Los Angeles, California. Art lovers who have witnessed her performance have experienced first hand the power and clarity of her commanding presence.
Naama T. Lewis has received her Bachelors of Science in Bioengineering, Masters of Science in Bioengineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is currently pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Math Education with a focus in Curriculum and Instruction Design. Naama has worked with the Young People's Project for 7 years and has experience in multiple levels of programming from teaching as a College Math Literacy Worker and organizing for youth within YPP. Later she moved into designing curriculum for the organization. She has presented at conferences for mathematics, engineering, and education.
Benjamin Moynihan currently serves as Director of Operations at the Algebra Project Inc. Ben actively engages in building alliances across multiracial and multigenerational boundaries through education, technology and the arts. He has worked with the AP Inc. for more than 15 years, demonstrating his commitment to long-term educational reform. In the 1990s he co-developed the African Drums & Ratios Curriculum with Bob Moses and a team at the Algebra Project. In 1999, he received a Master of Education degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, studying Technology in Education and Arts in Education. Ben holds a B. A. in Non-Western Music from Dartmouth College (1987). During 1988-1989, he studied Djimbé drumming at the Conservatoire National De Musique in Dakar, Senegal. Ben lives in Somerville MA with his two teenage sons, Jaama and Toby.
Eric (Rico) Gutstein is a professor at the University of Illinois—Chicago. He works on Freirean approaches to teaching/learning mathematics for social justice, critical and culturally relevant urban education, and the politics of mathematics education policy. He has taught high school and middle school mathematics and has been involved in social movements throughout his adult life. Rico is a founding member of Teachers for Social Justice (Chicago, http://teachersforjustice.org/ ) and is active in the struggles against gentrification and school closings in Chicago. He is the author of Reading and Writing the World with Mathematics and a co-editor of R ethinking Mathematics. He currently works with closely with high school students and their math teachers at the Greater Lawndale/Little Village School for Social Justice in Chicago and will teach 12 th grade mathematics in 2008-09.
Roy L. Karp, Esq. is founder and director of The Civic Education Project, Inc. which has run civic and constitutional literacy programs for Boston-area youth for the last six years and launched a Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project at Northeastern University School of Law last year. He has taught high school students in a wide variety of settings, including interactive know-your-rights workshops for youth organizers, and has also run professional development workshops for secondary level teachers.
Sen. Jamin Raskin is an acclaimed lawyer, legal scholar, author, civic activist, and Maryland State Senator. He founded the Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Literacy Project at American University in 1999, wrote it's two textbooks, We the Students: Supreme Court Cases for about Students and Youth Justice in America , and has helped seed similar projects at law schools across the country. He has spoken countless times about the project and the need for increasing constitutional literacy.
Anne Johnson , a retired English teacher, received her B.S. degree in English from Jackson State College (now JSU), Jackson, MS and her M.S. degree from William Carey College, Hattiesburg, MS. She began her teaching in Monticello, MS at McCullough High School. She taught in the Forrest County School District, Hattiesburg, MS, Petal Separate School District, Petal, MS, Orleans Parish, New Orleans, Louisiana and Jackson Public School District. She is the recipient of the Joseph P. Whitehead Educator of Distinction Award, Star Teacher, and Wal-Mart Teacher of the Year.
Anne has worked with the Algebra Project for eight years. Her training in education includes: the National Writing Project (JSU), Breadloaf/Pineywoods, Middlebury, VT, Pacesetter's English, Dallas, Texas, Marva Collins Preparatory School, Chicago, Illinois, William Carey College-School of Administration and the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, MS.
Candace DiBiano is a doctoral student in Math Education at the University of Texas at Austin. While working on her Masters in Mathematics at Texas A&M, Candace held an NSF GK-12 Fellowship where she worked as the “Resident Mathematician” of a rural Texas middle school. This experience sparked her interest in math education and equity, and led to her pursuit of a Ph.D. Currently, Candace works for the nationally-recognized UTeach Teacher preparation program at U.T. Austin, which recruits highly-qualified secondary math and science teachers. Her dissertation topic is how framing mathematics problems in a culturally-relevant manner affects robust learning in students from diverse backgrounds.
Theodore Chao is a doctoral student in Math Education at the University of Texas in Austin. Before starting graduate school, he taught 7th/8th grade mathematics at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, NY. He is a graduate of the New York City Teaching Fellows alternative teaching certification program where he matriculated at St. John's University. Theodore's current research focuses on mathematics teaching for social justice, and how to affect educational policy through modeling systems that lead to genuine student empowerment.
Ian Benson, PhD , is Chief Scientist of sociality, a network of open source developers. He has a Masters degree in Math, and a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, England, and a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford. Since 2004 he has been Principal Researcher for the Stanford Tizard Project (http://tizard.stanford.edu)
Candace DiBiano is a doctoral student in Math Education at the University of Texas at Austin. While working on her Masters in Mathematics at Texas A&M, Candace held an NSF GK-12 Fellowship where she worked as the “Resident Mathematician” of a rural Texas middle school. This experience sparked her interest in math education and equity, and led to her pursuit of a Ph.D. Currently, Candace works for the nationally-recognized UTeach Teacher preparation program at U.T. Austin, which recruits highly-qualified secondary math and science teachers. Her dissertation topic is how framing mathematics problems in a culturally-relevant manner affects robust learning in students from diverse backgrounds.
Theodore Chao is a doctoral student in Math Education at the University of Texas in Austin. Before starting graduate school, he taught 7th/8th grade mathematics at I.S. 318 in Brooklyn, NY. He is a graduate of the New York City Teaching Fellows alternative teaching certification program where he matriculated at St. John's University. Theodore's current research focuses on mathematics teaching for social justice, and how to affect educational policy through modeling systems that lead to genuine student empowerment.
Greg Budzban is a professor in the department of mathematics at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His research interests involve modeling various processes in the world as stochastic discrete dynamical systems. His main research involves studying these models using algebraic structures, especially transformation semigroups. He is currently co-PI with Bob Moses and Ed Dubinsky for the NSF curriculum development grant, “Creating the Floor of Mathematical Literacy”. This grant is helping to design a challenging high-school curriculum for under-served minority students centered on mathematics problems with current research interest.
Demetrica Gorden-McMurtery , a native of Jackson, MS, attended and graduated from Lanier High School from 1996-2000. She received her B.S. Mathematics degree from Tougaloo in 2005. She has been employed with the Algebra Project since 2006 and she is a former student of Brinkley Middle School and Lanier High School where she was a student in the Algebra Project (AP). As a result of her years in AP, she was influenced to become a teacher in mathematics where she is presently employed. She also is a co-founder of The Young People's Project. She works with the youth ministry at her church and she is also a member of the praise team. She is married to Jerrell and they have three children: Makayla, Khamari and Kara.
Lynne Wolf , an attorney, received her law degree from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and her B.S. from Cornell University in 1997. Lynne has represented low-income clients through a housing clinic, researched Northern Ireland's equality impact assessment model and analyzed it for US applications. From 2001 through 2003, Lynne worked as a research assistant with the Institute on Race and Poverty at the University of Minnesota, where she did research on issues of structural racism, including the civil rights implications of campaign finance reform and the impact of structural racism on multiracial coalition building. Since joining the CSI in 2004, Lynne has been developing research, analysis and advocacy tools on a range of projects, from land use planning and racial equity in South Carolina to reframing the public conversation on race.
Lynda Turet comes to us with a background in research and policy analysis on racial equity issues, including immigrant rights. She formerly coordinated Coro New York Leadership Center's Immigrant Civic Leadership Program and served as Legislative Director to New York City Council Member Dan Garodnick. She is a graduate of Tufts University where she majored in Peace & Justice Studies and American Studies and is a recent graduate of the Coro Fellowship in Public Affairs, a premier leadership development program, where she further developed her skills in community and stakeholder analysis and alliance building. Lynda currently serves on the leadership team for Swirl, Inc., a national multiracial, grassroots organization that aims to challenge society's notions of race through community, education, and action.
A native Mississippian now living in Jackson , Mississippi , Cassandra Welchlin brings leadership and policy/advocacy experience to CSI. Most recently she worked for the MS Youth Justice Project, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center as Director of Public Affairs developing and executing organizing, outreach, and policy strategies to Mississippi communities affected by the school-to-prison pipeline. Cassandra has worked as a legislative advocate at Congregations for Children, developing legislative and lobbying strategies to improve the well-being of poor children in Mississippi.
Greg Bowe has been collaborating with the Algebra Project since 2003. He has participated in Summer Institutes with both the Jackson Mississippi and Miami Florida cohorts, teaching writing and language arts courses. His research interests include both program administration and the role of students' languages in their education. His academic background is in Composition and Rhetoric, and he currently serves as a Research Associate with Florida International University's Center for Urban Education and Innovation, as well as consulting to writing programs at all levels of schooling.
Dr. Doris Terry Williams is director of the Rural School and Community Trust (formerly Annenberg Rural Challenge) Capacity Building Program. She has been associated with the Algebra Project in various consulting roles since 1992 and currently serves as a consultant and trainer for the organization's community, parent, and site development program. She has more than 30 years of experience in preK-12 and higher education and was formerly assistant dean and director of teacher education at North Carolina Central University in Durham, NC.
Lynne Godfrey has been involved with the Algebra Project since 1982 when Bob Moses and his wife Janet sent their four children to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Open School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. With her students and other teachers in the King Open School, Lynne helped develop and taught the Algebra Project Transition Curriculum. She has taught grades 2-8 in Cambridge and Boston. Lynne is a fully certified Algebra Project Teacher Trainer and Trainer of Trainers. She has worked as an Algebra Project trainer, staff developer and consultant for several Algebra Project sites. At present, Lynne is a District Instructional Mathematics Coach for Cambridge Public Schools.
Dr. Vincent Harding is an historian, activist, author and educator. Deeply concerned for the state and development of American democracy, he has spent half a century studying and teaching about movements for compassionate social change. Harding is chairperson of the Veterans of Hope Project – an educational initiative on religion, culture and participatory democracy -- which he co-founded in 1997 with his late wife, Rosemarie Freeney Harding. He is author of numerous essays and books, including Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Inconvenient Hero. Dr. Harding was the first director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center for Social Change and the founding director of the Institute of the Black World, both in Atlanta, Georgia. He also served as senior consultant to the groundbreaking PBS series on the history of the Civil Rights Movement, Eyes on the Prize.
Mary Maxwell West, Senior Research Assoc, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA02140. Mary worked together with Frank Davis on research and evaluation of the Algebra Project from 1993-2006, and is now assisting the project with internal evaluation (for NSF/IMD) and research coordination (for NSF/DRK12).
