For the past four years, the Early Math Collaborative has partnered with the National Association for Family, School, and Community Engagement (NAFSCE) to establish and advance the mission of the Center for Family Math. We are delighted to welcome Dr. Holly Kreider, Director of the Center for Family Math, to our blog. In her post, she offers an in-depth look at the scope of the Center’s work, highlighting practical tools and strategies that can help families embrace and enjoy learning together. Please join us in welcoming Holly as she shares innovative ways to make math a fun, integral part of everyday family life.

Why a Center for Family Math?

At NAFSCE, we believe family engagement is essential for improving children’s learning and advancing equity. One area where families can really make a difference, but that has received relatively little attention, is children’s math learning. Research shows that everyday math activities and conversations between children and parents and caregivers add up, creating better school and life outcomes. Some savvy funders and Family Math champions that understood this untapped potential, formed a working group that recommended establishing a national home to grow a Family Math movement, and in 2020 they selected NAFSCE to be the host of The Center for Family Math (the Center).

What is the mission of the work?

The Center’s mission is to advance research, policies, practices, partnerships, and systems that amplify the power and love of math through family and community engagement. Ultimately, we envision a world where Family Math advances learning and equity for each and every child. By Family Math we mean culturally relevant math concepts and interactions occurring in the everyday activities that families engage in with their children. Our work is guided by a collaboratively developed strategic plan that calls out five pillars:(1) deepening practice, (2) supporting meaningful research, (3) advancing policy and communications, (4) building partnerships and organizational capacity and (5) sustaining the movement.

Who does the Center for Family Math provide resources for?

Our primary audience so far is family-facing education professionals, like parent liaisons, classroom teachers, school administrators, and district family engagement coordinators. We have a lot of emphasis on preschool and elementary education now. However, we also have some terrific resources geared for parents and caregivers and aspire to stretch our focus to include more family engagement in math learning for older students.

What are some resources you are most excited to share?

Our familymath.org website was recently refreshed and is chock full of great resources. We have recently compiled a Family Math Toolbox — a searchable online library of practice resources for educators and parents. Resources were vetted not just by the math content experts at the Early Math Collaborative, but also by the Family Math parent leaders who advise us. The parent leaders emphasized resources that were engaging, inclusive, and accessible. Those same parent leaders also authored a MakeItMath toolkit with lots of guidance for other parents on how to engage in everyday math activities with their children at home and in the community. We have also recently added a Spanish version. Two website features that lift up all the amazing thinkers and doers in the field — our Family Math blog and recordings of our effective practice webinars. Most importantly, you can sign up to receive monthly e-updates on all things Family Math!

Finally, I am extremely excited about work being produced by our Family Math Dissertation Fellows. Under the guidance of our Research Consortium, we have just concluded the first Family Math Dissertation Fellowship program. Eight Ph.D. students (some now graduates) whose dissertations focus on Family Math related questions worked with us for two years and presented the key takeawas from their findings at our First National Assembly, held in October 2024 in Denver, CO. They attended our meetings, connected with our PAC and Steering Committee members, produced a joint blog about their work, and created presentations to describe the key takeaways from their findings at our First National Assembly in October of last year in Denver. Each fellow has also drafted a research-to-practice brief based on their dissertation work which we will be publishing shortly.

What is one simple thing families can do to support their children’s math learning?

Be curious. Wonder out loud with young children about shapes and sizes and quantities in everyday activities like cooking and laundry and reading a bedtime story. Ask your middle-schooler about their math homework, where they might be stuck, what they already know, where and from whom they can get help. Ask your high schooler about their hopes and dreams and explore together how math might connect to that.

What would you say to someone who feels intimidated or anxious about engaging their child in math activities?

First, I would say – you are not alone. A lot of people experience anxiety about math and believe that they are not a “math person.” These are common feelings and beliefs in American culture. Then, I would completely disagree. I would not discount your feelings, but I would argue that if you are a person, and you do (any kind of) math, then you are a “math person.” It is about broadening the way we define math. As for math anxiety, Erikson’s own Jennifer McCray says in a recent entry to our Family Math blog – Family Math can be an antidote to math anxiety, because it is fun, it happens everywhere, and it is rooted in relationships.

What is one thing educators can do to support family math at home?

At NAFSCE, we think it is important for educators to “reflect, connect, collaborate, and lead alongside” when engaging families in their children’s learning. In other words, it is not just one thing. But the first thing is reflecting. Ask yourself, what are your feelings about math and your own experiences? How does that affect the way you relate to parents and caregivers? And how can you begin to learn about the math that is already embedded in your students’ home lives? Once you tackle those questions, pathways to engaging meaningfully with families and encouraging joyful math at home will surely open up.

How can communities support young children’s math learning?

There are so many ways to explore math in one’s community and some really innovative organizations making it easy. MathTalk and its MeasureEverything! app uses virtual reality to help little ones see math in their neighborhood. MathHappens brings math-on-a-stick and other fun activities to county fairs, libraries, and other gathering places. LearnLead has piloted programs to explore math in the built environment all around us, as well as in children’s museums. And of course, math trails, math walks in the community, and intentionally designed playgrounds can all help children and youth observe the math around them and even create problems for others to solve.

What is your vision for the positive impact of your organization?

First of all, we strive for a world where more people — including families, educators, and other family-facing professionals and decision makers — know what Family Math is and why it is important. Ultimately, I hope that Family Math is as pervasive as Family Literacy is becoming, where families talk about and enjoy math fun each and every day — much like many families do with bedtime stories. We all need to come together to make this happen. As I like to say, we are all greater than the sum of our parts. Our parent leaders, our research consortium, our steering committee, our leading partner—Erikson Institute’s Early Math Collaborative — are all essential parts of the equation. We hope readers of the Early Math Collaborative’s newsletter will join us in this quest.

How does the Erikson Math Collaborative partnership support the Center for Family Math mission?

Erikson’s Early Math Collaborative (EMC) and the Center for Family Math have a long-standing relationship. EMC helped develop the ideas that guide the Center’s mission and provided leadership for the effort to create and publish its Research Agenda. They act as companion math experts for the Center; when math materials need to be reviewed or we need to develop a new resource for family-facing organizations, EMC often steps in. They help staff the Center’s Research Consortium and Steering Committee efforts, as well as present on behalf of the Center at conferences, webinars (view one from last year, featured in this newsletter), and workshops across the country. They assist in planning our Family Math presence at NAFSCE’s annual gathering, the National Assembly for Family Engagement in Education and attend as presenters, and to support the Center. They will join us at this year’s event, October 6-10 in New Orleans. Finally, they share information about the Center and related family math events and resources in their newsletter, reaching over 13,000 subscribers. It is a joyful collaboration!