Henrico Small Business Spotlight: Beck Professional Services
Barry Beck, Jr. believes every kid can be a math kid. With Beck Professional Services, he’s hoping to instill that belief in every kid he meets.
Beck has been in the education field for more than a decade, and the 37-year-old Henrico resident is dedicated to helping children learn mathematics with confidence.
As a math specialist at Arthur Ashe Jr. Elementary School, Beck oversees all math instruction and helps teachers engage with students in creative and efficient ways. Just like at his day job, Beck’s goal with his company, Beck Professional Services, is to help kids realize they're capable of anything they put their minds to.
“The overall mission of the company is to facilitate lessons and engage students in mathematics,” Beck said. “Everybody can understand mathematics. It's just that people learn differently.”
Standard writing advice is to write what you know; for Beck, both of his “Barry’s Mathemagical Journey” books are exactly that, as they chronicle his time learning math in the second grade. But what he hopes is so powerful about his books is that they reflect on his childhood just as much as they draw from his teaching experience today.
“It's not that they don't understand math, the way it's being represented by that teacher or instructor they don't understand,” Beck said of students who struggle with the subject.
His first book, Barry’s Mathemagical Journey, dives into both Barry and his best friend Jorge’s difficulties with math. Barry came into second grade “with all the confidence in the world” after a successful first grade, but he quickly realized he wasn’t as good at math as he thought. Jorge, on the other hand, struggled because the way math was presented in his current classroom in the United States was different from the way it was presented in his native country of Mexico.
Thankfully, a special person came into Barry and Jorge’s classroom and tried a different tactic.
“It took someone else to come in and present math in a different form and fashion to help me really understand that math is really all around us,” Beck said.
The second book, Barry’s Mathemagical Journey Part II, continues sharing Barry and Jorge’s learning experience by diving into different hands-on and pictorial representations of math.
“It's helping them better understand math, because they're maneuvering with it,” Beck said of mathematical representations that kids can manipulate.
Beck’s books were so well received, he decided to release Barry's Mathemagical Journey Interactive Notebook.
“After the first and second edition of Barry’s Mathemagical Journey, a lot of people came to me and said, ‘Hey, this is phenomenal, but do you have any activities that directly correlate with both books,’” Beck said. “So I decided to come up with an interactive notebook with writing activities, reading activities, math activities, and early exposure to Spanish to help students better grasp the concepts.”
But that’s not where Beck’s efforts end. Beyond books, Beck Professional Services offers a variety of – you guessed it – services geared towards young students.
Beck offers math lessons with hands-on manipulatives, reading and writing lessons or a combination of all of the above. He also offers mentorship opportunities for groups of boys and/or girls, as well as author visits (the latter of which he’s happy to make into a lesson opportunity).
“The normal author visit is the author just coming in, and they're reading the excerpt from their book, and then they answer questions,” Beck said. “But me being an educator and still teaching, I make it a lesson. So I do activities from the book to engage the entire audience. . . So they're learning literacy, they're learning mathematics, and they're learning communication skills.”
Beck even has a few employees to facilitate lessons that tie math with things like music, STEM, and physical education. His message to people interested in booking Beck Professional Services for an event? “Just let me know what you need.”
“Anything that you need, I'm willing to come in and talk to your audience,” Beck said. “Send me an email at brbeck@mathemagicaljourney.com and reach out to me and we can have a conversation.”
Beck also attends a variety of events and festivals throughout the year. Next up on the calendar is the Henrico Community Authors Expo for Young Readers at the Fairfield Area Library on Saturday, May 2, from 10 a.m. to noon.
For details about upcoming events, check out Beck’s Instagram page. To purchase his books, visit his website, Barnes & Noble or Amazon.
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