Elle Oliver knows anger. Before starting the program building belonging in math, multiplying by 12 used to make the rising sixth grader fume.

Now she’s tackling integers with relative calm. Still, confusion seems to trigger the frustration, she noticed. Bewilderment caused by a tough math problem can, like an unscratchable itch, build into irritation.

“I’m just scared to say stuff right now because I’m starting to get it wrong,” Oliver complains when struggling with a math question during a small group study session in July.

“This is a safe space,” replies a nearby adult.

Students in Oliver's elementary school become angry quickly, and it’s gotten worse over time, showing the necessity of a program building belonging in math. “I feel like, once you get older, you get more angry,” she says.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Oliver aspires to be a teacher or therapist. She wants to teach to build belonging in math so that other students like math just as much as she does.

Learning to soothe her frustration has helped Oliver perform math. It’s important to stop, think and write problems down, she says, noting that it’s a technique her mom taught her. It helps that Oliver’s confidence in solving math problems has increased, though double-digit division can still be a hassle. (She prefers the box method for double and triple digits and the butterfly method for fractions with different denominators, she says.)

Preparing to enter middle school, Oliver is keen to learn about what it means to have letters in math: “I just want to learn that because it's really confusing,” she says.

Tucked into the fifth floor of the CIC Philadelphia — a coworking space that boasts state-of-the-art science labs for college students and bioscience startups — Oliver is one of five rising sixth and seventh graders present today, all participating in a week-long pilot program seeking to keep middle schoolers off phones and social media during the summer.

Read the full article about Black Girls Love Math by Daniel Mollenkamp at EdSurge.