Mary Cowhey

Math Teacher and Math Coach, Jackson Street School, Northampton, MA

Mary Cowhey currently teaches Title 1 math and is a math coach at Jackson Street School in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she also has taught 1st and 2nd grade since 1997. She is the author of Black Ants and Buddhists: Thinking Critically and Teaching Differently in the Primary Grades, winner of the 2008 National Association for Multicultural Education Phillip C. Chinn Multicultural Book Award and the 2007 Skipping Stones magazine Multicultural Book Award. She was a community organizer for 14 years before becoming a teacher. She has received numerous awards for her teaching and activism, including the Milken National Educator Award, the Anti-Defamation League World of Difference Award, a National League of Women Voters Award, a University of Massachusetts Distinguished Alumni Award, the Massachusetts Agricultural Science Excellence Award, and the Massachusetts Public Health Association Frontline Award. Her essays and articles have been published in numerous books, journals, and magazines about teaching. She is a co-founder of Familias con Poder/Families with Power, a grassroots organizing effort among low-income families of color that uses a popular education approach to cultivate grassroots leadership among parents/guardians and youth and to help children succeed.