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What does it look like when an entire community supports children’s learning and development? In this 2-part interview, Gregg Behr talks about the origins of Remake Learning and how the expansion of Remake Learning Days has helped to catalyze similar community-wide efforts in several other cities and regions around the world. In 2007, Behr, the executive director of The Grable Foundation, founded Remake Learning as a network of educators, scientists, artists, and makers supporting future-driven learning opportunities for children and youth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Remake Learning Days began in 2016 as a local learning festival with hands-on learning events for children of all ages at libraries, schools, parks, museums, and other community spaces. Celebrating its 10^th edition this month, Remake Learning Days have now expanded to 15 different regions in four countries. Behr is also the author with Ryan Rydzewski of When You Wonder, You’re Learning, sharing the science behind the  work and words of Fred Rogers and Mister Rogers Neighborhood, a well-known television show that ran for over thirty years.  This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

Thomas Hatch (TH): What were some of the key developments and “Aha” moments in your early work at the Grable Foundation and with Remake Learning? 

Gregg Behr (GB): I joined the Grable Foundation as Executive Director 19 years ago in 2006. I followed on the heels of an exceptional executive director, Susan Brownlee, who had led this organization extraordinarily well. By all accounts, the trustees were incredibly pleased with where the foundation was and where it was going. That meant I came into a position as a leader saying, “How do you build on excellence?” To try to answer that question, I spent time out in the community just connecting with people with whom the Foundation had been working. Meeting with teachers, meeting with librarians, and meeting with others involved in the out-of-school space. I asked them, “What could we do that would be helpful to you?” I heard things like “I’m just not connecting with kids the way that I used to.” This was fall of 2006 and at the time I was 32 years old, and at first, I just thought, “Oh, this is just experienced people saying something like ‘the kids these days…”.  But then I began to notice who was saying these things, and I realized I was hearing this from people in different age groups. Some had just started their work, others were 30 years into their careers, and they were all literally saying that kids are different this year than they were last year. I thought that was strange. It was if something was happening seismically in kids’ lives. Sitting here in 2024 it feels naive to say these things, but looking back, in 2006, there were massive changes underway in kids’ lives. They were consuming information differently, producing information differently, seeking affirmation differently, developing identities differently. There was, in fact, something different happening in their lives.

“[T]here were massive changes underway in kids’ lives. They were consuming information differently, producing information differently, seeking affirmation differently, developing identities differently. There was, in fact, something different happening in their lives.“

That recognition sparked something and got me asking questions like, if it’s true that something different is happening, how do we support schools and other sites of learning in different ways?  Then, I had a meeting with a colleague at the Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University, and I began to realize that there were a whole lot of other people asking questions about kids and learning but that weren’t traditional educators. They were designers, artists; they were gamers and what we now call “makers.” I started meeting with those folks and began to wonder what would happen if you brought these people together? So I organized a meeting at a breakfast place called Pamela’s. It was just a dozen people, and I was very purposeful inviting 12 individuals from 12 very different fields, including – as examples – a teacher, a gamer, and someone in museum exhibit design. 

It was one of those things where I scheduled it for an hour for, and it ended up going on for 2 or 2 and a half hours. At the end, everyone said, “Oh, my gosh! I can think of 2 or 3 colleagues that ought to be part of this conversation about education locally.” Then I just started convening more of these meetings. I used an email subject line that said “Kids + Creativity,” just giving it a name. Then people started saying “Oh, that’s the Kids and Creativity meeting!” That continued for a couple of years, and it just kept growing and growing. It went from pancakes to bagels, and then we did a “Gong Show” like event in the basement of the Children’s Museum. After that, people at an organization called the Sprout Fund got involved. They were a community foundation-like organization that served as a “think-and-do” tank in our region. They had a 5 C’s model (Convene and Catalyze; Communicate; Coordinate;  Champion) that we still use today that they used to organize these meetings and give some coherence to this growing network of people and organizations.  They said “It will take the grant maker (me!) out of the center to see if there’s a “there there.”

This story speaks to a number of aha’s. It was an aha recognizing that something different was happening in kid’s lives — that the learning sciences and evidence from neural mapping now tell us was true. It was an aha and realization that we needed to think differently about who ought to be part of the conversation. There was an aha that this 5 C’s model that was originally used to attract and retain talent could be applied to help us build this network of folks involved in education generally and learning innovation in particular. The other aha was the power in shifting from talking about education to talking about learning; a simple thing in some ways, but at the time, it was profound because education conveyed schooling, whereas learning had this much bigger open sense that kids are learning in lots of places. That speaks to the power of words as well. I didn’t come up with the phrase “Remake Learning,” someone at the Sprout Fund came up with it, but, in retrospect, I think the reason that the name Remake Learning has stuck all these years is that using “remake” suggested that we don’t have to transform everything. We don’t have to blow everything up. You don’t have to get rid of everything that you’ve done for your entire professional life or what you studied. There may be some things that are timeless and classic, but we need to remake it for who today’s kids are. That name also wasn’t wedded to any particular thing like STEM or STEAM or maker education or digital learning. It captured all of those things, and it turned out to be a good umbrella for different approaches, different pedagogies, different frameworks, different words that people were using as they thought about innovation and learning in and out of school. That was another important aha. 

[T]he reason that the name Remake Learning has stuck all these years is that using “remake” suggested that we don’t have to transform everything. We don’t have to blow everything up…. There may be some things that are timeless and classic, but we need to remake it for who today’s kids are.

TH: What were some of the challenges you encountered and some of the changes you made as things developed from there? 

GB: Early on, it was important for this new intermediary – Remake Learning – to build trust and demonstrate this isn’t a zero-sum game. It’s not as if the Grable Foundation or other funders are going to now start funding this to the exclusion of other things. Then the folks at the Sprout Fund, in particular, really learned how to work well with other intermediaries in the early childhood space, the mentoring space, and the out of school time space, to see and recognize the work already going on and build on it. For example, they built on things like the Allegheny Partners for Out of School Time. It meant figuring out how something like Remake Learning builds on that work and doesn’t compete with it or replace it. We use words like “partnership” and “collaboration” pretty freely, but it’s really hard work to build trust among people and organizations. 

TH: Yes, it’s really hard work!  Do you have any examples, from the work with your partners, that helps to show what worked for you in building partnerships? 

GB: I suppose it’s not rocket science, but for one thing, we were really deliberate and very intentional about communications. We took advantage of our position in philanthropy and convened leaders of the key organizations at least quarterly so that there was transparency in our communications. We would always meet with food and other things to build relationships and get to know each other a little better, and we tried to engage in genuine conversations to say, “Here’s what we’re doing” and “How do we really help each other?” Just being really deliberate and reaching out to the Allegheny Partners and others to say “Hey, we’re thinking about an event on September 23rd.” Lots and lots of little ordinary things that would engender trust. Then people feel like, “Oh, I’m being heard.” Being deliberate about inviting leaders of organizations to be part of review committees, to create real, community-based participatory review committees for grant making. All of those simple, ordinary things repeated and done in a rhythm helped the Remake Learning team avoid some key problems. It’s a very human, relational enterprise to build out a network. 

“All of those simple, ordinary things repeated and done in a rhythm helped the Remake Learning team avoid some key problems. It’s a very human, relational enterprise to build out a network.“

TH: I think time and rhythm are really important. How do you plan for that? Did you have in your mind that this is going to take five years or ten years? 

GB: It’s interesting that you ask this question because I think rhythm is often overlooked. If Doncaster, England calls us or Fremont, California, calls, I always talk about the rhythm. I think the rhythm sets expectation. Like every spring we’re going to host Remake Learning Days. Every fall, there’s a Remake Learning assembly, which is kind of like our “State of the Union.” There are four meet ups every month. You can expect communications to come out every Friday. It’s not haphazard — all of the little things create expectations and make it easier for people to connect. thing. Kids need rhythm in their schools. but it’s also important for organizations, for cities, for regions to have a rhythm. Like this is our birthday. This is when we’re going back to school. For the network, creating a rhythm and being deliberate and intentional about it builds a culture; it builds tradition; it builds relationships. It builds all of those things. 

Kids need rhythm in their schools. but it’s also important for organizations, for cities, for regions to have a rhythm. Like this is our birthday. This is when we’re going back to school. For the network, creating a rhythm and being deliberate and intentional about it builds a culture; it builds tradition; it builds relationships. It builds all of those things.

There are a couple other things that I think kept Remake Learning grounded. One of them is that many times over the course of nearly 20 years, Remake Learning has hired consultants well trained in human centered design. They’ve convened members of the Remake Learning network for half-day or daylong retreats or other gatherings so that Remake Learning can ask “how are we doing? “How might we do things better?”  It’s ongoing strategic management with a real sense of human-centered design in it, regularly checking-in with the broader community. 

TH: So often funders and others are focused on the short-term – on generating outcomes in two or three years, but part of what I’m taking away from what you’re saying is that you weren’t focused on a specific time frame; you were focused on creating a set of activities and events that could be sustained to support activity over time, into the future. 

GB: Yes, and I would add that the focus was more about a mindset, an idea. It was about a movement to think about learning across a landscape that supports young people’s passions and interests. The events, the activities, the grants, the communications are all in support of changing mindsets about learning.

[T]he focus was more about a mindset, an idea. It was about a movement to think about learning across a landscape that supports young people’s passions and interests.”

TH: But that also entails a foundation, an organization, and people that are willing to say, “We’ll support these activities into the foreseeable future” rather than to say, “We’ll give you a three-year grant.”

GB: Yes, that is true. Remake Learning’s been lucky, and my work at the Grable Foundation plays a significant role in this, but beyond the Grable Foundation, we’ve had support from lots of other funders. Along the way, there have also been many one year and three year grants and other kinds of support for Remake Learning. But because of the steadiness of the support, Remake. Learning has always been able to budget years ahead. That’s very powerful; it’s never had to budget year to year.  

Kids in Remake Learning activities (photos: Ben Filio)

TH: What kind of advice do you give other people about how to establish that kind of support? Especially in a context where funders may be more inclined to give a grant for a three-year project than to provide core backbone funding for as long as it’s required. 

GB: I might win a Nobel Prize for philanthropy if I could answer that question! I use the phrase “make yourself lucky” occasionally, but there’s no doubt that you need some funder or, ideally, funders – whether they are individuals, corporations, philanthropies, or municipalities – to recognize that a network or an intermediary organization needs multi-year, discretionary, unrestricted support. Period. That’s the bottom line. If a funder doesn’t get that, you’re in trouble. 

“[Y]ou need some funder or, ideally, funders…to recognize that a network or an intermediary organization needs multi-year, discretionary, unrestricted support. Period. That’s the bottom line. If a funder doesn’t get that, you’re in trouble.”

TH: Are there things you’ve done – generating evidence of impact or sharing information – that have helped convince funders to provide that kind of support? 

GB: We use a lot of analogous and proxy examples. When we thought about Remake Learning initially, and its focus on relevant, engaging, equitable learning across our community, the easiest argument to make was to say, “look at what we’ve done collectively in philanthropy in the early childhood space over the past 20 years: we’ve built an intermediary that, in turn, supports hundreds of early learning centers. Look at what we’ve done in the out-of-school time space. Look what we’ve done in arts education space.” We really used those other examples – like the Campaign for Grade Level Reading – to say “these are the types of results we should anticipate when we create a network of schools, museums, libraries, other sites of learning committed to future facing, future driven learning.”

TH: You’ve been doing this work on Remake Learning for twenty-plus years now, but, early on, were there any developments or things you looked at that told you were headed in the right direction or that helped you convince other people to get on board? 

GB: Yes, and I wish we had more, but for one thing, we looked at data from individual organizations. I’ll give you two examples. The Elizabeth Forward School District was deeply involved in Remake Learning early on. They began rethinking how they approach professional development and learning. They sent their administrative teams to go see what was happening at some innovative places here in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon; they went to visit the Quest School in New York City, and to see a media space in Chicago. Then they started reimagining how to use their own spaces. They built a classroom that mimicked the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) and they were at the forefront of reimagining what school libraries could look like. In pretty short order they started to see some improvements in traditional measures, including math scores and reading scores. Their dropouts went from about 28 or 29 kids a year to 0 or 1. They saw the number of families choosing charter school drop by two thirds. They also suddenly found there was a new energy; there was an agency. People wanted to be in the school, and students were performing at higher levels. At the same time, the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh, like the public libraries in Chicago were at the forefront of imagining what teen spaces might look like. They brought in filmmakers and hip-hop artists alongside librarians, and they filled the shelves not only with books, but also with games and hardware and software. In pretty short order, they saw a two-fold increase of teens coming to the library. There was a massive increase of kids coming back to the library because, in that Mimi Ito way, they wanted to hang out and they wanted to mess around. Then, lo and behold, in the short term, there was something like an 18% increase in book circulation among those kids. Again, traditional measures. So clearly, things were happening, and we could point to those two and lots of other examples. 

Next week: How do you Build a Learning Ecosystem? Gregg Behr on the evolution and expansion of Remake Learning and Remake Learning Days (Part 2)