PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Who knew football could be fun and educational?
Nonprofit Black Girls Love Math used Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Eagles and Chiefs as a prime learning opportunity to teach girls adding, subtracting, multiplying by seven, yard conversions, score predictions and differentials.
“We ask the girls to predict the score and the differential in the score, it's just like an algebra problem, as well as how do you do yards conversions?” said Founder and Executive Director Atiyah Harmon.
The nonprofit hosts a weekend slam program every Saturday for girls in grades 5-8. It serves as an after-school enrichment program to prepare girls for college, career exploration and math competitions while also working to eliminate racial and gender inequality in the field.
The weekend’s football theme was just one of many ways the nonprofit teaches math. Harmon says they try to use learning scenarios the girls can relate to so it doesn't feel like they are sitting in math class for two hours.
“If you have $20 and you want to get some lip gloss, are you going to Sephora, Ulta or the hair store or the beauty supply store? And the girls will answer, and they'll have to explain why. It's a lot of math in it without it saying X plus 17 equals 34, solve X,” Harmon said.
Harmon says they empower girls to get answers wrong.
“We start and end with a creed, which is a bunch of affirmations. The last one is I am a beautiful black girl and I love math.”
Plus, each week, the girls recognize a “She-Ro,” a woman the girls can relate to who has a career in math. Saturday’s “She-Ro” was Philadelphia Eagles coach Autumn Lockwood — the first Black woman coach to win a Super Bowl.
Black Girls Love Math hosts the weekend slam program for eight weeks in the fall and spring at Saint James Middle School in Philadelphia.
For more information, visit blackgirlslovemath.org.