This spring, a new set of kids, parents, and caregivers will have the opportunity to experience Remake Learning Days, the showcase of hands-on learning activities first launched in Pittsburgh by the Remake Learning network in 2016.
With Remake Learning Days Across America (RLDAA), six new regions will host events for the first time, joining Southeastern Pennsylvania, holding its second annual learning festival originally called PA Seed Days. Southwestern Pennsylvania and West Virginia will hold their fourth annual Remake Learning Days, bringing the total number of participating regions to nine.
Each region’s Remake Learning Days will feature a wide array of events catering to audiences of all ages. Offerings will vary across regions, reflecting the unique character and strengths of each geographical area, from robotics and filmmaking in Pittsburgh to cornhusk dolls in Eastern Kentucky.
Wherever they take place, Remake Learning Days don’t come together magically, or overnight—especially when a region is hosting its first-ever event. For the teams of dedicated educators and administrators working hard to line up events and spread the word, the lead-up to the big day is an exciting time, but also a nerve-wracking one.
On February 20, Remake Learning convened regional leaders from as far as North Carolina, Chicago, and Tennessee, along with representatives from national partners PBS Kids and Digital Promise, for a day-long meeting at the Heinz History Center in order to share resources, strategize, compare notes, and get pumped up for the final push toward Remake Learning Days Across America.
Remake Learning’s director, Sunanna Chand, kicked off the meeting by recounting the origins of Remake Learning Days.
“Remake Learning Days gives parents a chance to experience what this new type of learning looks and feels like on the ground,” said Chand.
The first year of the festival was a smashing success.
“Schools had more parents in the building than ever, you had people coming from more than 10 miles away,” Chand said. “After the event, we asked, ‘How do we keep this going?’”
After a strong track record of Remake Learning Days events, RLDAA aims to extend the experiences and networking opportunities to new audiences in a number of different regions.
Far from being clones of the Pittsburgh event, however, the aim of Remake Learning is to offer support as each region builds a meaningful event that is authentic to the people, features, and opportunities of each region.
Chand sought to foreground a few essential goals of Remake Learning Days in attendees’ minds. First, she said, is the aim to get parents and caregivers in young people’s lives involved in the future of learning. Second is to promote collaboration between educators. And third is to “change hearts and minds,” creating a broad-based mindset change around education.
Following icebreaker activities designed to get the attendees moving and talking through their hopes and expectations for the day, Dorie Taylor, national producer for Remake Learning Days led a tutorial on the software organizers are using to post events for each region, offering tips and fielding questions.
Then Jennifer English of PBS Kids described the organization’s goals in supporting these events. While PBS’s television programming are its most visible activity, its broader mission is to provide supplemental educational resources to those children most in need. Working toward that goal includes presenting learning events and hands-on resources, including educator and caregiver training and development. That makes an event like RLDAA a natural fit.
“Remake Learning Days is an opportunity to elevate local organizations and allow parents and caregivers to see the deep resources in their communities, especially those that may be accessible but that people don’t know about,” English said.
With Chand as time-keeper, each regional lead shared a quick three-minute update on their progress, sharing both triumphs and challenges as the big day loomed ever closer. Michael Stone of Public Education Foundation, representing Chattanooga Learning Days, described the STEM Jubilee event planned for his city, assembling more than 4,000 elementary students for a design challenge. Traci Tackett of Bit Source Kentucky, organizer of Eastern Kentucky Remake Learning Days, mentioned an event being hosted in a homeless shelter, directly addressing the events’ key themes of equity and inclusion. Chicago’s representative, Sana Jafri of the Chicago Learning Exchange, shared plans to host a wide range of Spanish-language events in underprivileged neighborhoods across the city. And in Southwestern Pennsylvania, there are plans to convene students representing Allegheny County’s 43 school districts—potentially more than 1,000 students—for a kick-off event co-hosted by DiscoverED.
The sheer amount of activity and the range of planned activities the regional leaders shared was incredible. But for Cricket Fuller, project director with Digital Promise, a nonprofit organization that seeks to close the digital learning gap by fostering educational clusters, the sharing of ideas and tips between regional leads during this time was among the most powerful moments of the day.
“Ecosystem building doesn’t always lend itself to quick or easy achievements,” she said. “When you hear about all the hard work that is going on, that really gave me a sense of positivity and momentum.”
Fuller’s colleague, Malliron Hodge, education fellow with Digital Promise, offered a presentation on the use of metrics to track not only how many people attend a particular event but to gauge how likely they are to participate again, to connect with the host organization, etc.
CorCom, a research and consulting firm that will be conducting surveys for Remake Learning Days Across America, followed Hodge’s presentation by sharing the survey packet that event attendees will receive. The regional leads had the opportunity to raise questions about accessibility in language, including the possibility of creating surveys in Spanish or tweaking the language of the surveys to be more readily understood by children. That conversation connected to a broader theme, evident throughout the day, of centering equity—not only in terms of gender and race but of economic status and access to host sites—in the work that RLDAA organizers are doing.
Following a working lunch during which participants explored the Heinz History Center, attendees split up into two groups. One worked with Chand and Taylor on community building while the other met with communications strategists to fine-tune their messaging as they seek to get the word out about their events.
“The work that has been done in Pittsburgh to build a network has been a model for a lot of the other regions we work with,” Fuller said, reflecting on the day. “There’s been a lot of excitement about this network tool of a showcase because it galvanizes people in a region, bringing them together and making them aware of partnerships that are there.”
Over the coming weeks, we’ll be introducing each of the nine regions offering a Remake Learning Days event this spring.
The full slate of Remake Learning Days includes:
Eastern Kentucky, April 12–20 (led by KET Education);
Knoxville, Tennessee, April 15–20 (led by TCAT-Knoxville);
Southwestern Pennsylvania, May 9–19 (led by Remake Learning Network);
West Virginia, May 9–19 (led by Remake Learning Network);
Chattanooga, Tennessee, May 11–18 (led by Public Education Foundation);
Southeastern Pennsylvania, May 15–24 (led by PA SEED Ecosystem);
Chicago, Illinois, May 16–19 (led by The Chicago Learning Exchange);
North Carolina, May 17–18 (led by Triangle Learning Network); and
Northeast Ohio, May 17–29 (led by NeoStem Ecosystem)
This blog is part of series highlighting the work of each participating region of Remake Learning Days Across America, led by partners Remake Learning, PBS Kids and Digital Promise. Remake Learning wishes to thank the national sponsors of 2019’s Remake Learning Days Across America: Carnegie Corporation of New York, The Grable Foundation and Schmidt Futures.