Meet Akil Parker | Founder of All This Math and Math Influencer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Akil Parker and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Akil, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
I grew up in Baltimore, Northeast Baltimore to be exact not far from Morgan State University. I also attended Morgan State University for undergrad. For the duration of my formal education I earned high grades in math even though I did not always understand the concepts behind the formulas and algorithms. After graduating from Morgan I relocated to Philadelphia. After a brief career as a Bank Examiner ended I decided to become a math teacher and have never looked back. I often credit my son for my becoming a teacher since it was the fact that his mother and I were expecting him and my desperately needing a job that I took advantage of the opportunity to become a teacher in 2005.

Years later in 2017, I was a veteran high school math teacher looking for a way to increase my reach and help more students than just those on my roster at Overbrook High School. I had been a casual math tutor since the inception of my teaching career in 2005 and decided to take math tutoring more seriously. This was the genesis of All This Math, LLC. Just one year later in 2018 I retired from the School District of Philadelphia and started tutoring full-time. I was doing in-person tutoring until I went virtual as the world shut down in March 2020. This new arrangement enabled me to increase my tutoring capacity exponentially.

Along the way, I realized that the community needs better and more math resources. I especially wanted to make efforts to empower parents to be able to successfully help their children with math homework. To this end, I published my first book, ‘How To Use All This Math, Volume 1’ in 2023 (a resource guide for parents showing them how to use everyday activities with their children as arithmetic, algebra and geometry lessons). Soon after I began providing “New Math” Parent Workshops at schools and community organizations in response to parental complaints about the “New Math” their children were being exposed to in school.

Around 2021, I made a concerted effort to intentionally re-brand mathematics as a subject to run toward as opposed to something to run from as so many do. I became very proactive about proselytizing about the value of mathematics education on almost any podcast, radio show or conference that would have me. Mathematics has a branding and PR challenge – we collectively do not have enough positive conversations about it. I decided to change this reality.

To date, the All This Math YouTube channel has almost 1000 videos on topics ranging from arithmetic to calculus with 7,300 subscribers and growing daily. My goal is for the All This Math YouTube channel to become a household name and have it be a frequently used resource by students, parents and teachers. I also plan to write more books as math resources and expand my tutoring force in order to be able to provide tutoring to even more students and families.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
The road has not been overly challenging, but there has been some adversity. I have had struggles with shifting from an employee mindset to an entrepreneur mindset where I have to hold myself accountable since I no longer had a principal or vice principal enforcing negative consequences for dereliction of duty. Also, it has been challenging to individually manage all of the functions of running a business and achieving a healthy work-life balance. I need to develop a team to support All This Math in terms of daily operations.
You should know that in terms of our virtual math tutoring services, this area of the business has been a father-son operation. My oldest son, Nasim is currently a sophomore Nursing major at my alma mater, Morgan State University and has been an All This Math tutor since he was a high school freshman. I recruited him as a tutor so he would be able to earn money while practicing his math skills through helping others develop theirs. My daughter, Assata and youngest son, Kwame also aid the business by participating in YouTube videos I create.

Also, while we are technically based in Philadelphia, PA, much of our work involves youth and families in Baltimore, MD. We tutor many students in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. We also have partnered with several Baltimore City Public Schools to offer math support. We lead a “Histematics” summer program and school year component for Baltimore City students in collaboration with The William J. Watkins, Sr. Educational Institute. I am intentional about the work I do in Baltimore because Baltimore is the city that raised me and it is very important that I make meaningful contributions to the community since I have the ability and skill set. We at All This Math have plans to make an imprint in Houston, TX by offering math support services to parents and youth and promoting our resources as well.

Under the All This Math umbrella is also a teaching framework, “Histematics.” Histematics is a teaching framework where I basically use Black History to teach math concepts and use math concepts to teach Black History. This teaching methodology is an outgrowth of how my math classrooms were operated where we would have so many conversations about Black History that students would inevitably tell me that I should have been an African-American History teacher instead. I jokingly have stated that I am an African-American History teacher trapped in a Math teacher’s body. This approach can be witnessed during my tutoring sessions and youtube video content.

One of our major initiatives at All This Math is to help parents gain the confidence and understanding needed to be able to both inspire their children to become math scholars as well as to be able to help their children with their math homework. So we offer parent workshops and I create social media content aimed at parents to help them develop confidence in their own math ability.

If you ask about us, we are known for finding the math in everything especially things that most people believe have zero relevance to mathematics. We also are known for our culturally relevant mathematics instruction. The Histematics teaching framework addresses this very effectively.

I am very proud that many people that we have encountered think of All This Math whenever they think of a math-related question or see a story in mainstream media dealing with math. Our branding is strong at this point and getting stronger due to our consistent efforts.

We want readers to know that math is a tool of problem-solving which is a skill imperative to our individual and collective survival. Math is also a gatekeeper to both employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in the STEM disciplines (and other disciplines). We don’t want folks to be scared of math anymore and to instead embrace it like they would a good friend.

The most important lesson I have learned is that it is true that “If you build it they will come.” This was not just a well-placed movie quote from ‘Field of Dreams,’ it is a testament to my lived experience since 2017. I have been consistently building up All This Math by offering math tutoring, math courses to small groups, adding content to YouTube on a regular basis and creating printed material, and as a result more and more people are taking advantage of our services on a daily basis.

This lesson is important because at times it can seem that your work is not as impactful due to its reception and I realize that the work becomes more impactful as a result of your consistent effort at building the enterprise or institution. All This Math is an institution.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
There are so many to name, but I will do my best to highlight a few. I would like to shout-out my parents for being my primary teachers and instilling in me the value in education that I espouse and attempt to transmit to my students. I want to shout out my 9th grade Algebra 2 teacher, Mr. Sam Brown as well as my 9th grade Geometry teacher, Joshua Bessicks. These were two highly competent Black male math teachers that helped me to feel that I could excel in mathematics on a high level. I also want to shout-out all of the students I have ever taught because it is through the act of teaching them and being in community with them that I have learned to teach math so effectively. I also would like to thank three of my most significant politico-cultural influences in the ancestors Dr. John Henrik Clarke, Dr. Amos N. Wilson and Kwame Ture. Studying the writings, speeches and research of these brothers has helped me to see the necessity for our community to learn mathematics and use it as a tool of liberation.

Website: https://www.allthismath.com

Instagram: @allthismath

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akilparker

Twitter: @allthismath

Facebook: @allthismath

Youtube: @allthismath