Teacher opens avenues for students in math and dance

The arts community will recognize Madison Frampton-Herrera on stage as a dancer, choreographer and director, but to students at Jesus Moroles Expressive Vanguard, she is their math teacher.

A product of Dallas ISD, Frampton-Herrera graduated from Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts in 2015, where she studied dance. She grew up with both—dance and math. Her father is a medical physicist, and she grew up doing things like coding. So when she first began her journey at Moroles, she was the tech applications and robotics teacher and embraced this science role. 

Currently teaching ESL math, this is her second year teaching in the district and her fifth in public education. 

Independent thinking is something that she promotes with her students, and something she learned at Booker T., along with creative thinking and problem solving. While being a math teacher is her primary role at Moroles, this week she brought a little of her other life to the school when she started an afterschool classical dance class, which encompasses ballet, modern, and jazz, for kinder through third-grade students. On her first day of class, 15 students showed up. She anticipates more students showing up, as the news about this opportunity spreads.

“We’re preparing them for that next step, that next journey,” Frampton-Herrera said. “Especially with the current economy, dance isn’t always attainable.” 

Because of the cost of dance classes in studios, she said not every student will have the opportunity to take dance classes. One of the reasons she created this after-school program for kids was to give them that opportunity to try out dance without the cost of a private studio and instructor. 

“Dance is a way to get that kinesthetic awareness,” she said. “You learn how to move in space, you learn how to connect with one another.” 

Frampton-Herrera also said she started the program to help students improve in their problem solving skills and their gross and fine motor skills, which students need more of because they are constantly on technology, she said. 

“Having gross motor skills and building that core is so important to anything like walking, writing, typing, and so on,” she said. 

Like learning math, in dance you learn things that will help you in all areas of life because it’s learning work ethic and discipline, she said. 

“It’s all connected,” she said. Outside of Dallas ISD, Frampton-Herrera continues her passion of bringing dance to youth from communities all over the north Texas area through the nonprofit organization she founded with her husband Favian Herrera, who is also a graduate of Booker T. 

The Herrera Dance Project was founded back in 2019 and has done collaborative work with organizations such as the New Philharmonic of Irving, the Mesquite Orchestra, and most recently presented  “Echoes of Justice,” a choreographic dedication to Santos Rodriguez at Arts Mission Oak Cliff, a professional production that included both professional dancers and student performers. 

Frampton-Herrera said she’s encountered role models along the way that have inspired her in her journey, including Lily Cabatu Weiss, a leader in the Dallas arts community, who was her teacher at Booker T. She also cited Moroles principal Marissa Tavallaee as an inspiration.  

“My principal has shown me what it is to be a leader. She is the person that continuously strives for betterment, and I think that’s what this community needs,” she said.

Frampton-Herrera said she has had so many good experiences in these first two years with the district and said that when she shows up to work every day, her students show that they love learning and are willing to learn. To her, that’s one of the best things about what she does. 

“I am the teacher now that I needed as a child, and in that sense, I’m proud of myself because I wish someone would have broken it down for me like that,” she said. “I wish someone would have taken the time to really develop the concepts and not just teach the content, and I’m happy to be that person in their lives.”