During Black History Month, we’d like to recognize Bob Moses. He was a legendary Civil Rights Movement leader who organized black voter registration efforts and Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. He was also an innovative math educator.

Bob Moses was born in New York City on Jan. 23, 1935, to a family of modest means. He was raised in the Projects in Harlem. Despite his family’s limited financial resources, Bob earned a scholarship to attend Stuyvesant High School, an elite public high school for gifted boys. Before his graduation in 1952, Bob was elected senior class president and served as the captain of the school’s baseball team.

Upon graduation, Bob earned another scholarship, this time to attend Hamilton College, a prestigious private liberal arts college in Clinton, New York. There he majored in philosophy and participated in both the basketball and baseball programs. After completing the requirements for his Bachelor’s degree in 1956, Bob traveled abroad extensively, working in a series of Quaker summer camps in Europe and Japan building housing for the poor, harvesting crops for a missionary hospital, and improving facilities for mentally disturbed children. The following year he earned his Master’s degree in Analytic Philosophy from Harvard University.

Bob was teaching at the prestigious Horace Mann High School in the Bronx when he became aware of the student sit-ins that were taking place in Greensboro, North Carolina. He decided to join them, and that decision launched the math educator’s path towards becoming a legendary figure during the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement. Bob is best known for organizing the Black voter registration efforts and the Freedom Schools made famous during the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer. This heroic teacher’s revolutionary work, which was not without risk to life and limb, transformed the political power structure of entire communities.

Forty years later, Bob advocated for yet another transformational change: the Algebra Project. When he created this program, Bob asserted that a deficiency in math literacy in poor neighborhoods puts impoverished children at an economic disadvantage. The deficiency makes students unable to compete successfully for jobs in the 21st century. This disenfranchisement, he declared, is as debilitating as lack of personal liberties was prior to the Civil Rights Movement. Bob’s solution was to organize people, community by community, school by school, to overcome the achievement gap. He believed this would give impoverished children the tools they need to claim their share of economic enfranchisement. Bob described his work in this area in his  book, Radical Equations: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project written with fellow Civil Rights worker Charles E. Cobb, Jr.

Sadly, Bob Moses passed away in Florida on Sun., July 25, 2021, at the age of 86.

A chapter about this remarkable teacher is also included in my second book, entitled Chalkboard Heroes: Twelve Courageous Teachers and Their Deeds of Valor.  This book is also available on amazon; click on this link to view: Chalkboard Heroes.

Louisiana math teacher and track coach Brittany Bonnaffons has been named her state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year. Photo Credit: Louisiana Life

I am always happy to share the story of an exceptional educator who has been honored for their work with students. One of these is Brittany Bonnaffons, a math teacher and coach from Luling, Louisiana. She has been named her state’s 2023 Teacher of the Year.

Brittany is originally from Midland, Texas. She moved to the New Orleans area as a junior in high school. Once she graduated from high school, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Louisiana Scholars’ College at Northwestern State University. She earned her Master’s degree in Business Administration from Louisiana State University. She earned a second Master’s degree, in Exercise Science, from the University of Louisiana Monroe. She earned a third Master’s degree in Education from Northwestern University.

Brittany currently teaches Algebra to ninth graders at Hahnville High School in Luling. The students that are enrolled in her classes have low scores on their middle school standardized tests, but because of her intervention, 63% of the students who were not on track to pass the LEAP and 93% of her remaining learners pass the Algebra 1 LEAP 2025.

This Chalkboard Champion’s career as an educator has spanned 12 years so far. But Brittany didn’t originally choose teaching as her profession. She was successfully working in corporate America when she started volunteering as a track and field coach at Hahnville High School in 2018. When her husband noticed her passion for working with the young people, he suggested she go into teaching.

Brittany still serves as the Head Coach for her school’s track team. During her tenure, the team has captured four district championships and has taken regional runner-up honors twice. Among her athletes, there have been more than 50 individual district medalists, more than 30 individual regional medalists, and more than 10 state medalists.