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NBA Math Hoops

The NBA Math Hoops program features a comprehensive community program, board game, mobile app, and classroom curricula that allow students to learn fundamental math and social-emotional skills through the game of basketball.

Initially developed in the classroom of a math educator in Southern California, the program is now implemented in partnership with the NBA, WNBA, NBPA, WNBPA, and a majority of teams across both leagues.

Sign up for a training on the NBA Math Hoops website or reach out for more information!

NBA Math Hoops has scaled to engage over 1 million students across the United States and around the world.

Students can independently access NBA Math Hoops by downloading the program’s mobile app at no cost on any Android or iOS device. 

Educators can bring the NBA Math Hoops experience to classrooms, after-school programs, and summer camps by requesting information from our team. Participating programs may attend program activations, including educator trainings, student-led tournaments, and STEM career and financial literacy learning experiences.

MLB Players STEM League

Launched in partnership with the MLB Players Trust, MLB Players STEM League is a baseball-inspired program for middle-school age youth. The program brings to life the energy of the sport through a board game and curriculum that cultivate students’ math and social-emotional skills. The program is FREE for youth-development organizations and schools of all types, and helps students build new skills, confidence, and a passion for learning through a fun and engaging program rooted in sport. If you're interested in bringing MLB Players STEM League to your learning environment, click here.

The MLB Players STEM League board game is the product of 30 years of education game design experience and features the real stats of current MLB stars, including players from every country represented in Major League Baseball. Students compete to solve math problems and score points in a timed setting, while working with arithmetic, decimals, percentages, and fractions. The curriculum is tied to Common Core State Standards and 21st Century Learning Skills, and offers a series of adaptable lessons, allowing students to develop important executive function and social-emotional skills while taking a deeper dive into stats and data analysis in the game. The product includes custom artwork from world-renowned artist Keith Shore.

 

MLB Players STEM League features several annual championship events, which are transformative opportunities for students to celebrate and connect with peers in their community. The 2024 MLB Players STEM League Global Championship took place during MLB All-Star Week in Arlington, TX, featuring students across the U.S. and Latin America. Other championship events have engaged students in the Caribbean and Colombia in partnership with National Sport Authority Bahamas, Babe Ruth League, and Project Béisbol.
 

MLS STEM Goals

MLS STEM Goals is a new Learn Fresh program that leverages the game of soccer to engage students with STEM and social-emotional learning. The community-based program is built around a simulated soccer game that targets 5th and 6th graders with grade-appropriate, standards-aligned questions across science, technology, engineering, and math disciplines, with a particular focus on sustainability and renewable energy! Students work up and down the field to score goals using player stats, and chance and action cards give students the opportunity to learn more about soccer. The program is currently being piloted in Sacramento, CA in partnership with Sacramento Republic FC of the USL Championship and Sacramento Metropolitan Utility District, and through support from a STEM Action Grant from the Society For Science. If you're interested in implementing MLS STEM Goals, click here.

Youth Assist Tracker

As part of the NBA Cares State Farm Assist Tracker, the NBA and State Farm® have teamed up to help impact communities across the country by donating $5 for every assist made in NBA games. Acting in the spirit of being a good neighbor, students and educators have the opportunity to compete for grant funds by completing the Youth Assist Tracker Challenge. This experience engages students in STEAM learning, while also challenging them to consider their personal impact on their community. To learn more, visit the NBA Cares website.

To date, the Assist Tracker program has awarded more than $3.2 million to schools and out-of-school time programs in 87 communities, impacting over 425,000 youth.

Learn Fresh Fellowship

Through the Learn Fresh Fellowship for Culturally Inclusive Education, we aim to increase representation of curriculum writers of color within the mainstream American education system. The fellowship invites educators to create and broadly share standards-aligned curricula that authentically represent the cultural, ethnic, and racial identities of their communities.

Throughout the experience, fellows work closely with the Learn Fresh team to develop and refine a self-defined project that falls within the bounds of the fellowship’s mission. The project can focus on any content area or grade level. In conjunction with our existing community of education, program, and philanthropic partners, we provide spaces for educators to refine, test, and promote their new work.

Four educators have been selected for the 2021-22 fellowship class from the cities of Atlanta, Baltimore, Denver, and Philadelphia.

Ashley Barnett

Baltimore, MD

Ashley Barnett is a lower schoolteacher working in a private school in Baltimore. She graduated from St. John’s University with a master’s degree in childhood education 1-6, and has been teaching for over 10 years in Washington D.C, New York City, and Baltimore. Ashley has taught K-4th grade students, as well as art to middle school students as an elective. Her favorite age to teach is first grade and her favorite subject to teach is reading.

Within the last 7 years, she has been writing, creating, and implementing curriculum that is taught through a DEI lens. Her ultimate goal is to make sure that students are exposed to a variety of books that feature BIPOC characters, BIPOC authors/illustrators, and characters and authors that are a part of the Big 8 identifiers.

Ashley is currently working on creating a reading curriculum that focuses on helping students understand their own identity. The hope is for students to be comfortable with who they are and understand that there are different people out in the world.

Chris Robinson

Denver, CO

I was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, where I currently reside. Growing up, my family put a high standard on education, but it’s something that I took for granted until I transferred to a private school in 8th grade. I immediately understood that education was not the same for everyone and as one of the only black students at my new school, the inequity felt personal. From then on, becoming a teacher was always in the back of my mind.

But by senior year, getting away from small-town Denver life was at the forefront of my mind. I left home to attend Northwestern University in Illinois where I earned my B.S in Communication Studies. Having fallen in love with Chicago, I lived blocks from Wrigley Field for a few years after graduation. I was working at a start-up online college in the customer service and marketing department, but began to feel unfulfilled and without purpose.

I returned to Denver and I met my wife, who is a teacher. Not long after, I earned my teaching license through an alternative licensure program. For the last decade, I have worked in predominantly Title I schools as a special education teacher, administrator, and coach. I found fulfillment and purpose in working to bring equity to public education, helping students overcome personal hurdles, and sharing in students’ success.

Francene Garrett

Atlanta, GA

Dr. Francene Garrett holds a Bachelors of Arts degree with a specialization in Vocal Performance, and a Masters of Science degree in Curriculum, Instruction, and Technology, and an Educational Doctoral degree in Administrative Leadership for Teaching and Learning. She holds certifications in the areas of Middle Grades Language Arts and Social Science, and has held various leadership positions throughout her seventeen-year career.

Dr. Garrett currently serves as an Instruction and Personalized Learning Lead in the metropolitan area of Atlanta. She is a mother of one, an avid reader, and enjoys traveling and listening to music. Dr. Garrett prides herself on being a change agent in the field of education through the use of practical, relevant, and engaging professional development. She believes in the importance of the 4 C's in education and the integration of cutting-edge technology in teaching and learning.

Melanie Young

Philadelphia, PA

Melanie Young's passion is to make high-quality education accessible to all children. Melanie is the founder of Infinite Mind Tutors, a Black-owned tutoring agency with the mission to use the collective power of Black minds to transform America's educational landscape. Before launching Infinite Mind Tutors, Melanie was a teacher and tutor working in Philadelphia's public schools for over nine years.

During this time, Melanie taught at Central High School and coached two NBA Math Hoops National Championship participants across two consecutive years. She was awarded the Sixers Youth Foundation Game Changer Award in 2018, the Philadelphia Superintendent’s Award in 2016, the Woodrow Wilson Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship in 2015, and the University of Pennsylvania Woman of Color Award in 2014. Melanie is also a two-time graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.

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