After eight years teaching in Africa, he returned to Cambridge to finish his Ph.D. in the philosophy of mathematics at Harvard. When his eldest child, Maisha, entered the eighth grade in 1982, Mr. Moses was frustrated that her school did not offer algebra, so he asked the teacher to let her sit by herself in class and do more advanced work. The Algebra Project was born. The children then draw what they saw, talk about it, write about it and eventually create number lines, then practice adding and subtracting positive and negative numbers. Mr. Moses has also developed a set of manipulatives and math games, the crux of which is a version of craps using a three-dimensional model of monomials, binomials and trinomials.
Students roll dice of red, yellow and blue.
Their scores translate into equations and, eventually, they calculate the probability of a WOFT - win on the first try. A separate curriculum teaches ratios through African drumming. It taught me to use outside things to solve my problems. He starts each morning upstairs in a pristine distance learning laboratory, teaching a class via satellite at Simmons High School in the Delta town of Hollandale. Mr. Moses waits awkwardly at the lectern, watching on TV screens as the students amble in and sling backpacks on desks, the universal sign of, I dare you to teach me something.