Transforming Lives: Stories of Impact From Our Grantees

Each day, our grantee partners touch the lives of countless educators, students, and families. Through the stories of these beneficiaries, we get a glimpse into what impact looks like on the ground in the communities our grantees serve. Previously, we shared stories from a fifth-grade CommonLit teacher, a FluentSeeds classroom tutor, an EdNavigator healthcare provider, and a parent from the National Museum of Mathematics in New York City.

Here, we’re thrilled to highlight three more stories that bring to life how the organizations we support create meaningful change. Read on to see how a teacher home visit transformed the life of one District of Columbia parent, how families in Alabama learned to incorporate math into their daily lives, and how a Michigan elementary school fostered a culture of resilience by solving math puzzles.

Building family-school partnerships with Parent Teacher Home Visits

Teachers and staff are trained to develop meaningful relationships with families and encouraged to meet twice per year: first in the summer or early fall to align on parents’ and caregivers’ hopes and dreams for their children and to discuss how they can partner together to achieve them, and then in winter or spring to discuss academics or any other relevant issues. Throughout the year, teachers and families maintain ongoing communication.

While initially skeptical, Katrina quickly realized this home visit wasn’t going to be the type of interaction she had feared. “It wasn’t like the teachers were coming to check on me and look at my home, which is what I thought it was…That first home visit over the summer turned out to be a great opportunity for me and the rest of the kids in the household. The visit was awesome. The teachers and I became friends. It was a relationship.” This initial visit sparked Katrina’s involvement in her niece’s school, which led to Mikelle’s teacher recommending her as a trainer for PTHV. In the years since, Katrina has tapped into her own experience as a concerned parent to train thousands of teachers in districts across the country.

In one PTHV study, most participating families reported that, as a result of home visits, they realized interactions with educators did not have to be negative or uncomfortable, and they began to develop stronger and more equitable relationships with school staff.

“I learned that hopes and dreams are important for parents to think about,” said Katrina. “I learned there’s so much work to be done to take care of kids’ social-emotional needs. When I think about my niece’s and my situation, it was about all of us, me, the schools, everyone working together.”

Inspiring math confidence with PBS SoCal’s Family Math

In 2019, Alabama ranked last in the country in math proficiency, with only 28 percent of fourth-grade students performing at or above the NAEP Proficient level. To turn these numbers around, in 2022 the state passed the Alabama Numeracy Act focused on improving math instruction and support for children across the state. Recognizing an urgent need aligned with the Numeracy Act, the Alabama Public Television (APT) early childhood department looked to implement the Family Math program, developed by Overdeck Family Foundation grantee PBS SoCal.

Family Math encourages early math learning at home by providing free educational materials and activities for families designed to make learning fun, engaging, and easy to incorporate into pre-existing daily routines. These resources are accompanied by workshops for parents and caregivers to increase their confidence, knowledge, and skill to use these materials.

From 2023-24, APT rolled out its Family Math initiative across the state, co-branding the PBS SoCal materials to bring them to Alabama’s local markets. The team aired hundreds of broadcast spots modeling ways for parents and caregivers to engage young children in early math learning during everyday activities; distributed more than 800 materials to families and partners across the state including books, activity kits, booklists, and the Family Math Activity Booklet; and facilitated six Family Math workshops in partnership with Harmony Head Start and Preschool Partners.

“The most notable and encouraging feedback received was after we did our Shapes training for all of the families at our partner Preschool Partners,” explains the APT team. “Multiple parents shared how encouraged they felt after the training that incorporating math concepts and helping their child learn them was much simpler than they thought. They shared that they often felt like the activities they did with their child needed to be or look ‘perfect,’ but the training helped them see that just by being aware and engaged with their child throughout the day, they can help their child learn.”

APT is starting a second round of Family Math workshops for families and child care providers across Alabama to build on the success of the first year, and recently developed a new on-demand course for ECE educators called Early Math Success: Essential Math Skills for Infants and Toddlers. A recent study of PBS SoCal’s Family Math participants revealed an 11 percent increase in caregivers’ knowledge and awareness of foundational math skills and a 10 percent increase in caregivers’ confidence to support their child’s learning of early math skills after participating.

Building a culture of resilience with ST Math

“The kids love math in this building. There’s a great school climate,” said Kris Paquette, Principal at North Elementary School in Birch Run, MI. Since 2021, North Elementary School has utilized ST Math, a Pre-K through eighth-grade visual instructional program, to help foster a school-wide excitement for math learning. Developed by MIND Education, ST Math uses the brain’s innate spatial-temporal reasoning ability to solve mathematical problems, building deep conceptual understanding through challenging puzzles, problem-solving, and formative feedback.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the North Elementary leadership team and Birch Run Area School district conducted an extensive search to find engaging solutions that could help accelerate students’ math learning. “We went through quite a process to select ST Math as the best option for our practitioners, and it has paid dividends,” explained superintendent Diane Martindale. “My goal is to think of the future and the present for my young learners. I want to help them build resilience and skills that are highly important for them in a global world—ST Math helps us accomplish this.”

With support from donor funding provided by the ST Math School Grants Program with Ford Motor Company, the school implemented the program in Pre-K through eighth grade and noticed a steady shift in students’ determination and resilience to solve puzzles and an improvement in math skills. “We love the correlation of ST Math and grit,” said instructional math coach Ann Keipert. During the school year, classrooms compete to complete puzzles on the platform. Each week, the class that is in the lead is celebrated with a poster announcing their accomplishment. “The kids love the competition. The highest level of effective teaching is when it’s student-centered and they’re able to take ownership of their learning.”

Since implementing ST Math, North Elementary School has seen improvement in Michigan state assessment scores and an increase in NWEA math scores from the 70th percentile to the 90th percentile. A 2019 study by the Journal of Research on Technology in Education found that students who use ST Math have higher mathematics self-beliefs than their non-ST Math counterparts, and that self-beliefs were associated with positive changes in mathematics achievement.

Thank you to Katrina Branch, Alabama Public Television, and North Elementary School for sharing your stories.