Spotlight On Innovation: Learn Fresh

In our series titled “Spotlight On,” we sit down with nonprofit leaders from across the education sector to dive deeper into how their organizations have unlocked innovation, built evidence, and achieved growth. Our latest Spotlight On Innovation features Emma Banay, who manages our Inspired Minds portfolio, in conversation with Nick Monzi, co-founder and CEO of Learn Fresh, an education nonprofit dedicated to improving students’ STEM and social-emotional achievement through sports and entertainment.

Learn Fresh partners with NBA, WNBA, NBPA, WNBPA, MLB, and MLS leagues and teams to embed relevant themes pertinent to youth throughout its programming. “We like to showcase all the different players from a range of countries in Major League Baseball through our baseball program, all the different teams across the NBA and the WNBA through our basketball program, etc. That’s core to how we design the actual product that shows up for a teacher or student,” said Nick.

Through these professional sports organization partnerships, Learn Fresh incorporates player stats directly into its games and engages students through team-sponsored events, building important connections to the world around them. “Locally, when we partner with a team, there’s such an incredible opportunity to have conversations with their staff or engage an athlete who’s passionate about math education or afterschool programs to build a closer connection.”

The organization’s real-world, game-based approach aims to inspire intrinsic motivation and joy for math learning. Since it was founded in 2013, Learn Fresh has reached more than one million students and 10,000 educators nationwide, with over 90 percent of partnered programs serving low-income communities.

Learn Fresh’s flagship program, NBA Math Hoops, in partnership with the NBA, is designed to improve math proficiency in fourth through eighth grade students through interactive STEM enrichment with a board game, accompanying curriculum, and mobile app. The program provides students with opportunities to practice mathematical operations, explore probability, and improve fluency, while also encouraging them to collaborate, demonstrate good sportsmanship, and persevere in the face of challenges. Each year, students from around the world gather to compete at the NBA Math Hoops Global Championship tournament—an exciting chance to meet players and peers and showcase their math skills, teamwork, and sportsmanship.

“Central to [Learn Fresh’s] role in the field is framing math education as a narrative, as a story. When you think about the history of how humans have learned over time, storytelling has always been central to the way we connect . . . Math education historically has been devoid of this idea, so with programs like NBA Math Hoops, the curriculum is built like a narrative where you start at the beginning of a season, draft a team, work through a series of games, uncover different math concepts, and you end with a championship tournament that comes around year over year as a cycle that educators and students can participate in. The idea of creating a narrative arc to the learning experience in a math setting is something that’s unique to what we do.”

A 2021 internal assessment revealed that students who completed NBA Math Hoops improved by 29 percent on a math fluency assessment and 19 percent on a test of higher-order math skills. A separate internal social-emotional outcomes study in 2019 revealed that NBA Math Hoops participants were 30 percent more likely than a comparison group to report growth in key attributes such as leadership, grit, and resilience. With support from Overdeck Family Foundation, Learn Fresh is building on these findings by working with WestEd to conduct a randomized controlled trial to better understand the program’s impact.

Watch the full interview to learn more about Learn Fresh’s innovative approach to igniting students’ STEM interest, building math skills, and fostering confidence both in and out of the classroom.