How This Curriculum Specialist Brings Math to Life for Students

The idea of being “bad at math” or “not a math person” is deeply entrenched in American education — for students and teachers alike.

But it doesn’t have to be, says Phonisha Hawkins, director of instructional excellence for secondary math at KIPP Texas Public Schools, a branch of the national KIPP charter network.

If we encourage teachers to be more confident in their own math abilities, Hawkins believes, the next generation of students will have stronger skills and greater confidence in math as well.

To do that, though, both students and teachers must understand how math works at the conceptual level — beyond memorizing formulas and learning tricks for getting to the right answer.

As a curriculum specialist in Houston, Hawkins combats math anxiety in the classroom by helping to demystify the concepts for teachers, and taking the subject off the page and bringing it to life for students (occasionally using chocolate chip cookies as a convenient learning tool).

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