Gregg Behr is Reimagining America’s Schools and Remaking Learning

A leading voice in making this vision a reality is Gregg Behr. And, as it turns out, one of the hottest places in the country for these kinds of changes around active learning happens to be Western Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh, and one of the leaders is Gregg Behr, now in his 14th year as Executive Director of The Grable Foundation and recognized by President Obama as a Champion of Change in 2016. 

Ron Bogle: Gregg, you bring a lot of energy and passion to your work to improve educational opportunities for young people in the Pittsburgh region.  What is your inspiration?

Gregg Behr: If there really is one person responsible for what's happening here in Pittsburgh, in Western Pennsylvania, it's Fred Rogers. I say that because those of us who know Fred Rogers as an icon of children's television, know how he was grounded in child development and theory. He was also a remarkable innovator and disruptor himself. He took the new-fangled technology of his day, television, saw how it was attractive to young people, and said, "How could I co-op that for good?" We like to call it the ‘Fred method’. The people who are involved in Remake Learning here in Western Pennsylvania are attentive to that.

The reason I'm not satisfied with the status quo, and the reason that Fred Rogers wasn't satisfied. . . is because we're recognizing that kids are developing their identities differently, they're seeking affirmation differently, they're consuming and producing information differently, their lives are fundamentally different, at an accelerated pace, in a way that you and I didn't experience as young people. 

If in fact their lives are different, and now we know from neuroscience that their brains are actually developing differently, then how is it that we can structure schooling, how do we support experiences in museums and libraries, how do we think about out-of-school time opportunities, or at-home learning opportunities? We need to think fundamentally differently about these kids, their futures, while still appreciating, as Fred Rogers did, what is timeless and classic, like the role of caring relationships in kids' lives, and fusing that with new ways of learning.

RB: A marquee initiative that you founded and co-chair is Remake Learning. Tell us about it.

GB: Remake Learning is a regional network involving more than 600 schools, museums, libraries, early learning centers, institutions of higher education and creative industries, collectively thinking about what is relevant in learning, what is engaging, and what is equitable, and supportive of young people as they're navigating rapid, social, and technological change. It really began first with a coffee meeting, and then with a small pancake breakfast. 

We like to talk fondly about this breakfast that I hosted at Pamela's in the Strip District of Pittsburgh (as it's known), and it was a group of 12 individuals, who themselves are remarkable advocates, leaders on behalf of children, youth, and educators, and families. All of us were talking about the things that I just described moments ago in the context of Fred Rogers, beginning to recognize what today is so obviously the work of the learning sciences field, but wasn't well-known to a lot of us in the mid-2000s. Really beginning to appreciate the seismic change in kids' lives.

Everyone there was thinking about how they could serve kids, but they were representing different disciplines. Maybe that was the magic, right? Because there were educators at that table, but there were also technologists, and artists, and designers, and each of them said, "You know, I can think of two or three colleagues that ought to be part of this conversation as we think about learning," and we started to think about learning differently and the ways that we're supporting young people. 

That was the beginning of the network. Nearly 15 years on, this is a network that provides catalytic grant support to schools, museums, libraries and individual teachers and educators in and out of school so that they can experiment with STEM and STEAM, maker-centered learning, and technology-enhanced learning. It's a network that supports working groups, so we have regional working groups around computational thinking and computer science, around STEM, and STEAM, a special initiative called Shifting Power, about the ways that we center black, brown, and Latin X educators and researchers in the work that we do.

In the course of nearly 15 years, we've collectively raised nearly 100 million dollars to support this regional network, and the continuous work that we’re doing to redesign learning experiences in and out of school for our youngest citizens, through higher education.

RB: Remake Learning has a lot of moving parts — Remake Learning Days, the Remake Tomorrow campaign, Blueprint For Learning. How do they fit together? 

GB: We think of Remake Learning as this umbrella, where people who in different ways are wrestling with the future of learning and the future of work come together. Each person walks through a different “door”. One person might walk through the STEM door, another one walks through the maker door, another one walks through the personalized learning door. Five years ago, when reviewing the work of Remake Learning, we recognized that the network was serving educators and their allies well, but that we had an incredible amount of work to do to engage parents, families, and caregivers; to help parents understand why learning is being remade, how to support the kids in care in this learning environment with things that aren't familiar to them, like computational thinking, or maker-centered learning.

Then, how to start building demand for this new way of learning in their schools, in their libraries, in their community centers. That was the impetus for launching Remake Learning Days. Think of it as a festival . . . an amusement park of modern learning. There are hundreds of events that happen over about a nine-day period here in the Pittsburgh region, hosted in schools, museums, the places where kids and adults are learning. They're opening up their STEAM lab, they're opening up their SMALLab, they're opening up all these new learning spaces, and creating family-friendly events so that adults and children can learn together in the context of these new ways of learning, and all sorts of experiences for families to enjoy together.

RB: Sounds like a great program. Has it gotten traction outside the Pittsburgh area?

GB: As we look to 2021, Remake Learning Days will be held not only here in southwestern Pennsylvania, and northern West Virginia, but also in Chicago, Chattanooga, Eastern Kentucky, in the State of Oregon, in San Diego County and in Washington DC… 16 sites all across the United States are hosting Remake Learnings Days in 2021. The goal is really about engaging parents, families, and caregivers in this future of learning. 

RB: Is this growth being directed by you and the Remake Learning team, or is it taking root more spontaneously?

GB: Wonderfully, it's a mix. Here in Pittsburgh, we are constantly seeking world-class partners for the work that we endeavor to do on behalf of youth, families and educators in our region. So working with the STEM Ecosystems nationally, or working with Maker Ed, or other organizations that we have been able to forge partnerships with folks like the Chicago Learning Exchange in Illinois, or the Public Education Foundation in Chattanooga, Tennessee. But it's also the support of funders nationally. Schmidt Futures, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Hewlett Foundation have supported this work, helping it take root in sites across the United States.

This year, we also saw Christchurch, New Zealand host Remake Learning Days just a month ago in October. Because we've open sourced the ideas at Remakelearningdays.org, anyone can download the toolkits and the playbooks. So places like Christchurch, New Zealand said, "We want to do this for our community," and went ahead and did it.

We're constantly scanning the world  . . . We're looking at Christchurch, we're looking at Barcelona, but we're also looking at Sonoma County in California, or the triangle, or Chicago. There are communities around this country and the world that are wrestling with the very questions with which we're wrestling. Which really leads to a second initiative that you mentioned, and that is The Remake Tomorrow campaign.

RB: What is your strategy for communicating and connecting with others around the US and beyond?

GB: Remake Learning as a network invests significantly in communications, to help document what's happening, to elevate why it's happening, and to make sense of it.

Late last year, in November and December, recognizing that this is a network that's nearly 15 years old, we dreamed up this campaign called Remake Tomorrow. It's a campaign that spanned from May to October, consisting of a regular rhythm of our original articles, online events, online social media activity, $1.5 million in grants that were distributed, almost like local R&D to individual leaders, as well as significant institutions in our region, to say, what's next in STEAM learning? What's next in maker-centered learning? What's next in early literacy? What's next in play-based learning?

It's a campaign that, to our joy and surprise, reached 24 million people, 27,000 actual engagements, 14,000 people who participated in various events.

RB: Gregg, Remake Learning has another program that is particularly innovative called Blueprint for Learning. Reimagine America’s Schools is proud to have been a part of that initiative and bring a design focus to reimagining schools. Tell us about that?

GB: Put simply, Blueprint for Learning was a special grant-making initiative managed by Remake Learning. The Hillman Family Foundation, the Benedum Foundation, and the Grable Foundation pulled together $1 million that was designed to be redistributed to some set of schools, museums, libraries, and others who are involved in the Remake Learning network, responding to requests to redesign and reconstruct spaces. Western Pennsylvania, for all of its vibrancy, is not a place where we're building new school buildings and new campuses. It's just not a site of growth the way that, I don't know, say Las Vegas or some other part of the country is. 

Educators in this region have been thinking about how to redesign and repurpose their spaces? How do I redesign this library? How do I redesign this unused conference room? How do I create space that then drives the behavior that I want on the part of the people in that space - the educators, the young people, or otherwise. How do we support active learning? 

Well, we support active learning and all of those new ways that you and I described, like STEM, STEAM, maker, et cetera, space helps to drive that significantly.

Because we are seeing so many requests from organizations, these three funders worked together with Remake Learning to pull funds together and create a smart, coherent campaign that wasn't just about distributing money, but a process whereby Remake Learning could partner with the National Design Alliance and Reimagine America's Schools, and bring in architects and designers from around the country, and think about stirring the pot in our region. So much of this work is about stirring the pot, and helping to breakthrough, thinking about what's possible. 

Ultimately, more than 100 applications were submitted for 16 $50,000 grants, which were awarded to a range of school and non-school organizations in our region. That work is understandably delayed in part [because of the pandemic], but is still continuing as we talk right now, because the work of space and reimagining space is so important to the work of reimagining and remaking learning.

RB: A construction budget of $50,000 may seem pretty slim, but we saw a lot of creative problem solving with the 16 grantees and a lot of wonderful outcomes.

GB: Fifty thousand dollars in the scheme of things is not a ton of money, right? Obviously, with all of this additional support around it, $50,000 becomes magnified. Plus, the organizations themselves have started to think about, “How do I take advantage of my budget to create the space?” 

But there's something more fundamental about the Blueprint grants that's reflective of an approach that Remake Learning has taken for nearly 15 years. And that is really the power of little bets. Some might call it small hacks. There's a genuine belief that transformative change doesn't happen in some grand sweeping moment, but rather in a series of lots and lots and lots of little bets.

The Boys and Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania redesigning an ancient gaming room to become a maker space, or the Allegheny Valley School District taking advantage of an old conference room and re-imagining it as room design learning lab. These are small bets, but we can turn to lots of organizations in our region, whether it's the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, or the Elizabeth Forward School District, organizations that have completely transformed what it is that they offer to learners, and have all sorts of data and evaluation to demonstrate impact change.

Often, that work began with the redesign of one teen library space, or the redesign of one classroom in a high school? It was the trigger. It was the spark for the beginning of a culture change. Because with the transformation of that space comes a transformation of behavior, and the way that the behavior then affects the way that we're spending our budgets, the way that we're approaching our instructional professional development, the way that we start to design curricula.

Blueprint is really reflective of something that's so core to Remake Learning. I mentioned the big number earlier when I said $100 million over nearly 15 years. Well, a lot of that is grant making, and most of that grant making is distributed in increments of $5,000, $10,000, $20,000. Money that's essentially experimental R&D that allows a teacher and a technologist, or an artist and librarian to work together in a new way. It's thousands of little bets, and not some grand big sweeping moment.

RB: Let’s talk about the pandemic for a moment. We’re learning a lot about the strengths and weaknesses in public education. When we finally come out of the crisis, what are your thoughts about how we can reimagine schools … not just reopen schools?

GB: Ultimately, there's just no replacing a central role of leadership. As we look to the post-pandemic future, I have a genuine worry that a lot of people are going to have amnesia, as if something didn't just happen the previous, whatever number of months, because there'll be such a pull to get back to normal, snap back to normal. I think it's really incumbent upon all of us right now to recognize that system change is not guaranteed, and there is work to be done.

There is so much that was not working pre-pandemic. The systemic racism, the systemic underfunding of education learning, there are so many things that were not working, and that's not a future I want to get back to any time soon. 

As we think about relevant and engaging active learning, this goes to another core tenant of our work, and that is the continuous day in and day out, community mobilizing, community marketing, all of the community organizing work that has to happen in any network. In this case, a network focused on engaging relevant equitable learning. We have to remind ourselves continuously that systems change isn't guaranteed. 

RB: What might inspire education leaders to lean into change rather than fall back to old ways?

GB: People do need to see what's possible. They need to touch, feel, taste, smell what's possible. I suppose that's another important part of the Remake Learning story, about investing in communications and documentation, elevating stories that people can see peers who are in like-organizations or schools, similar to their own, and how they wrestle with the problem. 

We've invested significantly in both local conferences and organizing, and opportunities for educators to tour schools right here in Southwestern Pennsylvania. But we were also fortunate to support a delegation of 25 or 30 superintendents who just in February, before the pandemic closed things down, were in San Diego County visiting multiple schools, and other learning sites there together as a group. 

That's the key thing. It wasn't just one or two people coming back and saying,"You can't imagine what I just saw in San Diego!" It was a large group experiencing that together, and coming back together as a group to their respective organizations, and how then as peers they're differently supported as they're reimagining what's possible in their schools and other sites of learning, because of what they experienced together.

It's so important to be able to see what's possible, and to be provoked by it.

RB: I’d like to talk a bit about the design of the learning environment. People often don't think about the design of space as a part of change and innovation. I know you have a strong commitment to design. Where did that come from?

GB: All credit goes to Bill Strickland. Folks locally and nationally may know Bill Strickland as the founder of The Manchester Craftsman's Guild and Bidwell Training Center here in the Manchester neighborhood of Pittsburgh. He's the founder, he's been there for 50 years. An extraordinary person, who's quotable for so many reasons and ways.

I quote him often for his statement, "Environment drives behavior." I believe him wholeheartedly, because I’ve witnessed it again and again in my own personal life to say nothing of what I’ve witnessed in a place like the Manchester Craftsman's Guild, a place that has light and color, and access to tools, and opportunities, is not shrouded in darkness, it doesn't have gates at the doors, it's a welcoming, inviting place where you walk in and you're asked, "What do you want to do today? How can I support you?" 

They've taken that same philosophy at places like the Children's Museum in Pittsburgh, in their MakeShop, or their MuseumLab, and say, "What do you want to build?" And creating an aesthetically beautiful environment that influences that behavior. 

Through the Blueprint project, but also other initiatives in this region, we're seeing how schools are turning to the exhibit designers at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh, or the Carnegie Library turning to our colleagues at the Children's Museum, or other architects and designers, because they recognize that environment drives behavior. 

When you start to see different types of results because you've fundamentally changed the environment, you become a great big believer in the importance of design in the work that we do. The principles of human-centered design have also been at the core of Remake Learning over this nearly 15 years.

RB: Foundation and philanthropic leaders are playing a much more active role in advocacy.  In your view, what role does philanthropy play?

GB: There is no doubt that philanthropy can play and does play an important responsive role to what's happening in our communities. We've seen that in this pandemic, and some emergency responses in extraordinary ways on the part of funders.

But there's also an element of R&D funding that philanthropy can play, that can't be done in public policy. That's not what governments do. So philanthropy has a chance to invest in innovation and creativity, recognizing that some of those things might fail, but a few of them might work out beautifully. We've seen that time and again.

Sixteen grants were just awarded in the Blueprint program that we've talked about. Ideally, all 16 are going to [work], but maybe 11 of those 16 are successful. Well, the impact on the tens of thousands of students, and the years of impact could be extraordinary. Accepting that there are going to be a lot of mistakes, and a lot of failures in an R&D approach to grant-making is really important.

RB: What’s your next big priority?

GB: The thing about which I think we need to move full steam on, would be this whole area of the post-pandemic future.

There are some things that we need to imagine into the world. But maybe the thing that I'm most focused on right now, is the role of parents, families, and caregivers. 

We saw in the springtime, as the pandemic unfolded, a surge of empathy build up in parents and families about the roles of educators. That empathy has maintained, although to be sure, there are some levels of frustrations as this new school year has unfolded. But what the experience of the pandemic tells me is that we can do work differently to engage parents, families, and caregivers as learning allies.

What is the work that we need to do to support parents, families, and caregivers differently, so that they can be powerful learning allies? Because if we engage them, we could fundamentally reimagine and remake schools, and other sites of learning. That will be an absolute game-changer, and I feel like we have a huge opportunity right now to capitalize on that.

RB: We have a new President-elect. If you could make one request to the new administration what would it be?

GB: Schools are horribly under-funded. There is a basic public budgeting thing that the federal government can do, that our state governments can do, and that is to provide the funding, increase funding to our schools, their schools boards, and our school leaders.

I think if our government can trust our teachers, can trust our superintendents, and trust our school boards, they're poised to do remarkable things. They're hamstrung in horrible ways by public financing of our schools, and our government can change that overnight in an extraordinary way … I genuinely believe, as Fred Rogers said, we’re "At the beginning of something else." If we are thoughtful, and deliberate, and full with love in our work, we'll make things happen.

RB: Thanks Gregg for spending time talking about your work and for helping us Reimagine America’s Schools.