Shahid Muhammad, known as the "math doctor," loves to see students lean forward, eyes lit up because they have just made a connection between their daily lives and the abstract world of mathematics.
"Our students are potential geniuses," Muhammad told a gathering of black parents in Boston recently. "It's just when you look at students nationwide they are not doing as well as they could. I think the problem is motivation and a whole lot of things to do with our condition as a people."
To motivate his pupils to care about mathematics, Muhammad zings word problems at them involving famous figures such as Al Sharpton and Shaquille O'Neal. He uses examples from daily life -- blood pulsing through the veins or the beats in a rap song -- to demonstrate that math is all around us.
"Kids just see math as a bunch of numbers with no meaning," said the prep school teacher and university professor. "Too many times we just feed them a bunch of numbers and say give me the answer."
Muhammad marketed his book, "How to Teach Math to Black Students," independently for four years before Chicago African American Images agreed to publish it. The book hit stores in October.
Teachers and parents came to hear Muhammad's message in Boston and Brockton recently in events organized by the Education Committee of Muhammad's Mosque #11. Many brought concerns that their children are struggling with mathematics.
Lesa Muhammad, whose son is in fourth grade at the John Winthrop Elementary, said she tries to help him with his math but the techniques she learned are different from the ones he is being taught -- a common concern among parents.
"They are trying to teach him long division," she said. "He still has not grasped on. I use a technique I used when I was in school, but he wanted to do it another way and I said, `That way is even longer.'"
Many black parents in Boston face multiple handicaps when trying to teach their children math. Some do not have more than a high school education and some are single parents, making it harder to devote time to their children in the evenings.
Large class sizes also contribute to keeping parents out of the loop, stretching teachers' schedules until they have little time to communicate with parents.
"Parents have so many questions, but only ten to fifteen minutes at best for teacher conferences," said retired special education teacher Sylvia Muhammad. "You don't really discuss learning styles when you meet with students. You only have time to talk about the quality of their work, and it is unfortunate because learning styles are so important."
Students' different learning styles are what the math doctor focuses on.
"Yale University did a study that found that Sesame Street appeals more to African Americans, while white children responded better to Mr. Rogers," said the doctor, who teaches in the Chicago area. "Therefore, it may not be that black children are hyper, it may be that classes are too slow."
The Boston Public Schools should place more emphasis on techniques such as phonics, a reading technique which may help black children learn more efficiently than other techniques, according to some parents and teachers.
"I think the BPS needs to expand the number of techniques it uses to teach math," said Amina Barnes-Abdullah, a former kindergarten teacher and mother of a fourth-grader at the Boston Renaissance Charter School. "Some people are more visual, or more auditory. Some are more tactical."
As for math doctor Shahid Muhammad, he sees the need for teachers to lure students into a love of learning by drawing upon their non-academic interests.
"Most kids are interested in sports," he said. "I tell them if they don't know math, they can't play sports. At football, at halftime, they go back into the locker room and talk about calculations. But we've got to make more to do about being scholastically powerful than about being good at sports. These things black and Hispanic kids need because they are beat down in society, and sometimes parents beat them down."
Article copyright The Bay State Banner.
Photograph (Shahid Muhammad)
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