UT Dream Family Leadership Network Program

DREAM Family Teacher Math Leadership Network

Connecting Families and Educators as Co-Teachers and Co-Leaders
The DREAM Family–Teacher Math Leadership Network, housed within the DREAM (Designing Responsive Education through Access & Mathematics) Initiative, advances partnerships, research, and practice that connect families, educators, and community partners as co-teachers and co-leaders.

What is DREAM?

The DREAM Parent Teacher Math Network brings together parents, teachers, and the UT education research community across bilingual, general, and special education programs to attend to students’ strengths and needs, with a focus on emergent bilingual learners and students receiving special education services.

DREAM is powered by collaboration.

DREAM is grounded in the belief that expanded leadership drives change. The program connects educational programs with school–home contexts to create supportive systems that give children more opportunities to learn—and love—mathematics.

At its core is the power of parents as educators.

The focus is learning and teaching together: deepening understanding of K–12 math concepts, applying research-based practices, and integrating strategies from multilingual education, math education, and UDL to enhance student learning. Families then share this knowledge with other families across schools and communities, extending DREAM’s impact beyond the initial cohort.

Our Core Programs Include:

Parent as Teachers: Leverage and foster parents as teachers and leaders through eight monthly (24+ hrs of professional development) on math content and pedagogy. Afterward, parent leaders lead math workshops with other families.

Professional Capacity Teacher Learning: Increase knowledge and instructional skills for students’ math success, through sustained professional development between parents and teachers using evidence-based strategies for multilingual learners, special education, and UDL strategies.

Family-Driven Goals: Center and prioritize families’ goals, concerns and expertise as the foundation for learning and decision-making. Families co-lead formal and informal math workshops and co-develop workshop content and resources.

**Check out our Math Para Todos YouTube Channelwith math videos created by parents for parents.A new parent-created video will be launched each week.

Cross-School Networks: Collaborate within – and across feeder schools to align elementary and middle school communities around research-based math practices, supporting sustained, locally informed school networks.

Impact

Families, educators, and UT graduate student researchers build educational and leadership skills, deepen learning, engage their communities, and create lasting partnerships that support student success.

We’re Just Getting Started

We’ve made remarkable strides in our research, teaching, and community impact but our journey is just starting.

DREAM serves high-need areas of East Austin, home to the city’s largest immigrant and refugee communities. Many partner schools face state-required interventions due to repeated low accountability ratings—placing them at risk of full redesign, charter takeover, or student reassignment. DREAM responds to these challenges through a capacity-building family-school partnership model. By learning, teaching, and leading together as parents, teachers, and university educators and researchers, we are building sustainable community schools that positively impact the lives of thousands of Austin youth.

Your gift directly expands access to DREAM, ensuring families and educators can learn, teach, and lead together.

Your support provides materials, food, and childcare for monthly workshops; stipends for a cohort of 15 parents and teachers to serve as co-educators and co-leaders; and funding for UT graduate students who serve as instructors, co-teachers, and design-based researchers—fueling DREAM’s growth across Northeast Austin schools.