“I know how it feels to sit in the classroom and not understand what’s going on, and you know, not understand what the teacher is talking about,” he told CBS News.

Parker also started a YouTube channel where students can seek free lessons. He also published the book, How To Use All This Math, to teach parents how to learn and apply math in everyday life.

“I want to make it more normalized, you know, for people in the Black community to really embrace math and run toward it. I think that, you know, we kind of shy away from math,” Parker said. “A lot of us have had negative classroom experiences in math classes.”

Akil Parker

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