Everyone in education says they love kids.
It’s practically a reflex. The kind of thing that appears in mission statements and fundraising appeals and school newsletters without anyone stopping to ask what it actually means. Love is a big word. It’s easy to say and hard to define. And undefined words tend to be used loosely.
Years ago, we sat down in the Math Corps offices and wrote it out: what does it actually look like to love a child who isn’t yours? What are you committing to when you say that? The result became a part of our organizational philosophy. It’s not a tagline, but a definition we hold ourselves to.
Loving kids, in the Math Corps, means seeing them as “our kids.” It means feeling a genuine sense of responsibility for each child as a whole person, while working to build a real relationship with every single one of them. It means caring for them in the moment — a safe space, a good breakfast, a smile, a hug, a well-timed joke. It means sharing in their joy and their sadness. Wanting good things for their futures and actively helping them get there. Making every child feel special for who they are, and as they are.
That last part matters. Not who they might become. Not who we hope they’ll be. Who they are, right now, today.
The believing side of the equation is just as specific. We believe every child has a unique and special greatness within them. We believe all kids are good kids. We believe all kids have the capacity to grow in character and in mind.
“All kids are good kids” sounds simple, but in a country that has spent decades treating certain childhoods as problems to be managed — particularly for kids growing up in under-resourced communities — saying that plainly as an organizational conviction, is a choice. It shapes every interaction we have with kids. It shapes how we respond when a kid is struggling, when they act out, when they need more patience than we expected to give.
We wrote all of this down not because we had it figured out, but because we wanted to be held accountable to it. By our staff. By the families who trust us with their children. By the kids themselves.
At Math Corps, love is a standard you set and a practice you return to every morning, every summer, and with every kid who walks through the door.
That’s what we mean when we say it. And this summer, we’ll be saying it from our founding site in Detroit, at our newest site opening in Flint, and at every campus in between.