The only constant in life is change, and with change comes opportunity. As an organization, we continue to collaborate with our partners, educators, and families to meet the challenges of the moment for students. We're also building the foundation for transformative and sustainable solutions that we believe will provide more equitable growth opportunities for all students, and help realize a brighter future.
Now more than ever, we can see just how much the world needs powerful problem solvers. Thank you for continuing to support our mission—ensuring that all students are mathematically equipped to solve the world's most challenging problems.
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Brett Woudenberg
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Matthew Peterson, Ph.D. |
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This year, ST Math made a larger and more meaningful impact as we all continued to navigate the pandemic. Building off 2020’s all-new ST Math program, we continued to add new features to support students and educators whether distance learning, hybrid, or in the classroom.
Last October, our ST Math program earned the Learner Variability product certification from Digital Promise. The certification is a reliable signal for educators and families looking for evidence that edtech products support their learners’ unique needs. ST Math was one of only 15 products to be recognized with this certification. This new certification accompanies the research-based design product certification ST Math earned from Digital Promise last year. For both certifications, ST Math was recognized in the first cohort.
MIND’s flagship, award-winning podcast “Inside Our MIND” embarked on its second season. This new chapter of the podcast focuses specifically on our social impact initiatives including our partnerships and DEI work.
Listen in on this episode featuring MIND’s EVP and Executive Director of Social Impact Karin Wu. She discusses how our partners worked with us and inspired us to meet the moment of school closures and leverage our collective assets to support students, schools and families.
With so many national and regional education conferences cancelled this past year, we were excited for opportunities to speak virtually at national and regional education conferences. We also created ways to independently reach our community with the creation of a series of virtual events.
Here are some of the topics that our MIND speakers presented:
As teachers and administrators navigated challenge after challenge this year, they continued to inspire us with their stories, expertise, and optimism.
“After the shutdown, I asked a few colleagues what was going well in their districts and one, in a district very similar to mine, said his students were doing more ST Math than anything else.”
- Christopher Dodge, Teaching in a Pandemic
“Our number one priority was making distance learning their friend. But first, we needed to understand that families are going through a lot right now, so we aimed to make the transition as turnkey as possible.”
-Billie Jo Lamoureaux, 5 Distance Learning Tips from an ST Math Teacher
“One of the essential things every special education teacher should care about is equity. We need to ensure we're giving everybody what they need to be successful, and that's going to look different for every kid.”
-Erin Curtin, Insights and ST Math Tips from a Former Special Education Teacher
Our educator and partner communities are some of the best content creators on social media. This year, we launched our nationwide Instagram Takeover campaign to spotlight schools that went above and beyond to keep students engaged with ST Math during the pandemic. JiJi made appearances at several schools in Massachusetts, Texas, and Louisiana for action-packed days of fun.
For so many years, JiJi Day has been a monumental event that our ST Math community looks forward to every April. We were amazed to see how schools all over the country celebrated JiJi in their own special ways. We also designed several activities that students and teachers could do in the classroom or at home to ensure everyone could participate.
Our Pi Day lessons bring so much joy to students and educators alike. This year, Creative Content Manager Nina Wu continued the tradition but with a twist. She created a delicious square pie lesson to show how the remaining area between a circle within a square adds up to 3.14.
More time spent on ST Math translates to more learning, and increasing usage by just 10 minutes on ST Math has been shown to improve test scores. During the month of February, we wanted to inspire our schools to grow their love of math. We designed a list of daily activities teachers could do with students, love notes, and fun coloring sheets all to inspire students to spend more time with JiJi.
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The California Association of Bilingual Education (CABE) promotes bilingual education and quality educational experiences for all California students. We were thrilled to hear that three schools using our ST Math program—which takes a visual, language-neutral approach to math instruction—were awarded CABE's 2020 Seal of Excellence.
At MIND, we invest in data, research and evaluation. So much so, that we have an entire team dedicated to accountability and building valuable research partnerships. This year, our Data & Evaluation team made strides in examining DEI-based data more closely, creating robust ST Math insight tools for MIND’s internal teams as well as our educator partners, and collaborating with other research groups to improve edtech evaluation processes.
Utah STEM Action Center Releases Exemplar Statewide Program Evaluation - The Utah STEM Action Center released its annual report, which represents a new high water mark in a seven-year progression towards the vital practice of holding education programs and school districts using state funds accountable for achieving student learning impacts.
The ST Math Theory of Change - How does student time and energy invested in ST Math result in schoolwide math proficiency gains? When students solve their way through the puzzle-based games, they self-pace through their grade-level math content and master mathematical concepts.
Keep Students on Grade Level in ST Math, Even if They’re Behind - Students can successfully work through ST Math material at their current grade level, and doing so benefits their performance on summative grade-level assessments. This was validated even for students whose test results indicate they are two or more years behind in math.
Learning loss. The 20-21 school year started with this term looming in our minds. Schools and families tried to meet the needs of their students in classroom-based, hybrid, and fully remote learning models, but despite their best efforts, we started to see the learning loss predictions from last year come true. NWEA’s November 2020 analysis of student assessment data showed that students in grades 3-8 were about 5 to 10 percentile points lower in math than the same time in 2019. Gains in math were lower on average in fall 2020 than prior years, resulting in more students falling behind relative to their prior standing.
Those numbers were alarming. But in our response to this challenge, we shifted the conversation away from a deficit-based focus and towards a holistic and asset-based approach. Our Director of Impact Advancement, Brian LeTendre, compiled helpful insights and resources in his blog, From Learning Loss to Unfinished Learning: Resources for Changing the Conversation, and the One8 Foundation helped us build a Learning Recovery brochure for educators highlighting best practices and studies that show all students can succeed when given the time to work on ST Math.
As a research organization, we continue to conduct studies which have shown that bolstering students’ self-beliefs, and giving them the time they need for productive struggle are key ingredients to keeping students on a trajectory for grade level success. This is not only a learning issue. It is also an equity issue. All students are capable of succeeding on grade level math. Understanding this, our partners continue to double down on investments in best-in-class ST Math implementations, in addition to providing us guidance, and teaming up with us to create countless resources that help educators and students alike believe they are capable of higher achievements.
The work is far from done, but as I reflect on the past twelve months and all of the challenges we have experienced, I am truly grateful and inspired by the dedication and brilliance of my colleagues and partners.
Karin Wu
Executive Vice President & Executive Director, Social Impact
MIND Research Institute
Overdeck Family Foundation, founded in 2011 with a mission to measurably enhance education both inside and outside the classroom, announced a $3.75 million grant to MIND Research Institute. This three-year grant will improve and expand MIND’s ST Math program while the organization also works to research and develop more culturally relevant math curriculum and tools.
Laura Overdeck, chair of Overdeck Family Foundation and founder of Bedtime Math, with MIND co-founder and creator of ST Math, Dr. Matthew Peterson.
The Advanced Education Research and Development Fund (AERDF) is a national nonprofit initiative that supports ambitious Inclusive R&D programs designed to tackle intractable teaching and learning challenges that disproportionately affect Black and Latino students and students of all races experiencing poverty. In 2020, the EF+Math Program (which became part of AERDF in 2021), awarded MIND researchers with a $3 million multi-year Prototyping Track contract. The EF+Math Program was previously fiscally sponsored by NewSchools Venture Fund, where MIND's Board of Directors member, Cameron White, is a Partner.
One8 Foundation and their Mass STEM Hub team worked closely with us throughout the year to strengthen ST Math implementation and combat student learning loss. They also invited MIND to provide content for Massachusetts STEM Week. Students and families engaged in over 100,000 minutes of math activities together, and over 100 student-designed games were submitted as part of those activities.
Verizon continued their support of ST Math within Verizon Innovative Learning, a program that works to help foster digital inclusion. All children should have access to technology and quality STEM education. Through Verizon Innovative Learning, Verizon is turning belief into action by helping students achieve, learn, and create more with free internet access, free devices, and innovative next-gen technology-infused lessons.
John Deere Foundation announced it will invest $200 million over the next 10 years in initiatives that will bring to life John Deere's higher purpose: We run so life can leap forward. As part of its 10-year commitment, the Foundation will invest $100 million in the families and youth who live, work, and learn in John Deere's home communities to ensure their inclusive and equitable access to resources and educational opportunities critical for human dignity and self-sufficiency. In addition to increasing support of ST Math in their home communities, John Deere also supported MIND’s research and development work.
Phillips 66 knows that today’s youth are the future leaders of the energy industry. That’s why they invest in fueling students’ interests in mathematics and other STEM subjects. Phillips 66’s long-term partnership with MIND has helped to scale ST Math nationally. Phillips 66 provided funding for ST Math as well as recognized outstanding educators for their implementation of the program.
Cisco and the Cisco Foundation partner with nonprofit organizations around the world, including MIND, helping to solve global problems through cash grants, technology, and shared expertise. With Cisco’s support, we were able to continue helping students by giving parents direct access to ST Math. We also appreciate Cisco’s help in bolstering our thought leadership by including us as speakers at this year’s virtual ISTE conference.
MIND partnered with Rockwell Automation for Milwaukee Math Week, and the response was overwhelming. In addition to 100,000+ minutes of math activities engaged in, there were over 1,000 families who participated overall. With Rockwell’s help, materials for the event were translated into Spanish and these materials will now be available for all future events.
The mission of the William E. Hixson Foundation is to inspire learning. Focused on the many ways that small, incremental change can help create positive impact, the Foundation keeps an eye on the big picture and supports actions that help to make a difference in STEAM education. They aim to support students to get the most out of school—and life. The William E. Hixson Foundation believes that math exists in every facet of our world, and that every child should benefit from the gift of confidence that a strong mathematical foundation provides.
This time last year, the world as we knew it had come to a halt. As the pandemic pressed on, MIND colleagues learned each day to leverage more and more of each other’s strengths to overcome adversity. As we all yearn for a return to normalcy, we continue to look for creative and rigorous solutions.
Thank you for supporting our mission to mathematically equip all students to solve the world’s most challenging problems. Together, we’ll continue to build stronger foundations for an even more hopeful future.
To learn more about MIND's mission, programs, and impact, please contact socialimpact@mindresearch.org.
