Every January, Nashville teacher Joel Bezaire reads The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time aloud to his students. Sounds pretty standard, right? It would be — for an English class. But ...

Comic books and graphic novels, popular in many language arts and social studies classes, are just now tiptoeing into the world of K-12 math.

While math has long been regarded as a universal language, the subject poses many hurdles for students with limited English.