Black Girl MATHgic: Our 2022 Year In Review
2022 heightened the urgency for math competency as math scores plummeted to their lowest level ever recorded. Deeply alarmed by the statistics, we double-downed on our mission to increase math confidence and decrease math anxiety in black children with our award-winning Black Girl MATHgic Box and our new The MATHgic Prince Boy Box!
Journey with us as we reflect on how a full year of curated representation, inspiration, tools, and fun activities succeeded in raising math confidence and decreasing math anxiety in girls and boys in grades 3-8 to help them become confident math achievers poised to design the life they desire.
We introduced 14 mathematicians and 13 themes in 2022
Each month we featured a black female mathematician to show representation and to inspire and develop your girl’s math identity (her ability to see herself as a learner and doer of math), whether she decides to pursue a math-related career or not. The career, interests, and hobbies of our multi-dimensional mathematicians sparked each month’s engaging and real-world theme.
Where it all began
We “kicked off” 2022 with a football-inspired box sharing the math behind the game and featuring mathematician Giget Johnson who shared how she became a real-life National Football League sports agent.
18
The number of colleges and universities where our mathematicians earned their degrees, including Howard, Spelman, and Stanford,
15
The # of careers our youth learned about in our boxes in 2022, including:
Photographer
Math Teacher
Entrepreneur
Quilter
Criminal Defense Lawyer
Our most popular boxes of 2022
We read some great books, too!
We had the honor and privilege of donating more than 150 boxes impacting seven Detroit-based youth organizations.
Each mathematician shared their math journey. Sometimes an inspiring message about how someone overcame obstacles is all that’s needed to spark math confidence.
Math is for everyone. It’s accessible to everybody. It’s something that helps develop that muscle in your brain that makes you a critical thinker.
Rachel & Rebecca Crouch, featured in our July Art Gallery Box
In October we introduced The MATHgic Prince Box
To extend the 💜 to our boys and empower and ignite his love, skill, and appreciation for MATH.
Former NFL pro turned MIT Math Ph.D. Dr. John Urschel was our inaugural featured mathematician in the aptly-themed Football Season Box.
And, of course, it was all about the math! In the boxes, we covered nearly 30 math concepts this year including…
Statistics
Geometry
Multiplication
Fractions
Percentages
Budgeting
Estimation
Sequencing
Division
Angles
Integers
Word Problems
Measurements
…and Probability
To bring the math to life, we packed more than 15 awesome manipulatives into our boxes. Some of our favorites included:
The Love Math Journal
Blitz Champz Football Math Cards
The Whole Year Puzzle
The Amazing Star Cube Cosmos Geometric Puzzle
Fraction Dominoes
We accomplished so much in 2022!
And the year ahead is looking even brighter. Expect more mathematicians, exciting updates, and helpful resources to come in 2023. And month by month, we’ll continue to help kids learn to love math as they unlock the skills and confidence that they’ll take with them to the classroom and beyond.
