good afternoon everyone thank you i want to start honestly just by sharing how grateful i am to have this opportunity today to share some of the work that we're doing in pittsburgh in southwestern pennsylvania title of my talk today is moonshots bold ideas for the future of learning in pittsburgh and beyond my name is tyler samstag i'm the director of remake learning so remake learning is a free peer network for educators and innovators in the greater pittsburgh region and when we say educators we mean that loosely in the sense that our network is comprised of librarians artists designers classroom teachers learning scientists out of school time educators technologists and school administrators remake learning is an ecosystem that is much larger than southwestern pennsylvania but when you zoom in into southwestern pennsylvania what you have is remake learning and so as you can see here this is a visualization of our network which is comprised of over 1200 people projects and organizations across southwestern pennsylvania in the northern panhandle of west virginia when we talk about remake learning it really is those purple dots that we see in the top corner there and what it is that the remake learning network does or those who work in service of the network are those blue five bubbles that we see at the bottom those are called our network support strategies we turned 15 in 2022 we started in 2007 with a small group of individuals really spanning multiple sectors all interested in learning innovation coming together oftentimes in those early days over breakfast and as i shared here we are 15 years later and over 1200 people projects and organizations uh we are we all are we approach this work in many different ways but ultimately we're shared by we're unified by the shared vision of we want to build a future where learning is engaging relevant and equitable for every young person and in order to do that we really put equity at the center of our work we believe that no effort to reimagine learning can succeed without affording more opportunities to those of greatest needs and we do this by working alongside and uplifting learners of color learners in poverty learners with disabilities learners in rural communities and girls in stem this is a tall order to rethink remake learning across our region but ultimately we believe that no organization can transform teaching and learning alone and so remake learning exists to bring them together and so we strive to build that connective tissue those connections between the many places that young people learn and so today i'm here to really focus on one of our network support strategies that catalyze and so our five c's our network support strategies are the that the network we communicate we convene we coordinate and we champion and our moonshot grants are one of our recent catalytic grant opportunities but before we dig into the catalytic grant opportunities i want to provide just a note on our context which is the greater pittsburgh region if you've never been to pittsburgh when i talk to people oftentimes they conjure up images of this industrial pittsburgh where at the confluence of these three rivers uh really we're littered with steel mills reality is in 2022 uh pittsburgh is really encountering this radical transformation this is a coke works that used to be located about five minutes up the monongahela river from downtown pittsburgh and it closed decades ago and if you go there today what we have is literally in the infrastructure of this former steel mill is the robotics innovation center by cmu we're the home of really deep exploration around autonomous vehicles with companies like pittsburgh-based argo ai and astrobotics in the north side of pittsburgh is literally designing and building space shuttles and so remake learning you know really are interested in how can we leverage this momentum that we're seeing both in the space of education but within the context of our region to dream equally bold in the space of education and so that led us to in 2021 the creation of moonshot grants this was a journey that really stemmed from four regional foundations coming together i really committed to funding r d style grants for the exploration of really deep and bold experimentation in the space of education and so the opportunity of moonshot grants invited schools and educational organizations to apply for funds that support the testing of bold ideas the grants challenged applicants to envision what they hope learning would look like 10 to 20 years in the future what we called a preferred future of learning successful applicants have really sought inspiration in what we call signals of change or early examples of how preferred futures are emerging today projects really strive to capture the bold experimental actions that could be taking taken today to accelerate us towards these preferred futures and so the proposal for these grants really looked different than the types of opportunities that a lot of our educational organizations experienced in the past we asked folks to start with designing what we call this preferred future of learning we asked them to envision what they wanted learning to look like 10 to 20 years in the future then and only then did we ask applicants to think or brainstorm a bold idea an idea that would accelerate movement toward that future that they created and then lastly we asked them to think about outcomes brainstorm the ways in which they would know if their idea is experiencing success so thinking on this timeline of 10 to 20 years in the future again we asked folks to think about to or to lead with their preferred future of learning and we did so by walking all applicants through various future activities and so featuring allowed us to imagine possible outcomes with the hope of exploring better exploring and better sensing and equipping ourselves for the potential realities ahead of us we use the toll of future so that we might better understand what's coming and thus more effectively make choices that support the futures we hope to see and so this is the process that all of our grantees started on so they created these preferred features of learning we asked them to envision what are the attributes of this preferred future in other words what did learning prioritize in the future next we ask them to think about how do these attributes differ from learning today we asked them to identify these early indicators these signals of change to brainstorm how this future centers justice and equity and then if this future was the reality what might a future newspaper headline read over 500 educators from the region joined us in these future workshops to brainstorm preferred futures of learning i won't dig too deep into this but when we looked at all the answers across these various workshops these are some of the things that people identify that they want to see for the future and so once they have identified their preferred future of learning this is where we ask them to brainstorm what is that bold idea what is it that you're looking to try today that you're seeking funding for we emphasize that all projects really prioritized bold experimentation that they centered equity and justice and that they incorporated partnership and collaboration in 2021 remake learning distributed 1.2 million dollars funding 17 of these moonshot ideas and in 2022 we will again distribute another 1.2 million dollars we had 17 organizations receive funding in our initial two rounds in 2021 and so i want to focus today on three different moonshot ideas from three very different types of organizations the first is california area school district which is a small rural district outside of pittsburgh they really strived for a future where learners are recognized as individuals where learners are provided flexibility across space and time and learners are at the center of the organization's goals they found inspiration in the foundry in baltimore in the book grasp and the fact that colleges are increasingly moving away from s-a-t and a-c-t requirements their bold idea was to pilot a universal iep program where all students are afforded an individualized education programming program eliminating grade levels and grade assessments for the participating students which were approximately 30 students our second project is hatch an early childhood program they found or they struggle for a future where learning celebrates the humanity and creativity of every child that cultivates the joy of learning and that is radically imaginative generative and regenerative their idea was to deploy a play resident into pittsburgh public schools early elementary classrooms combining research and pedagogy to co-create and embed a true play curriculum and then lastly homewood children's village a community non-profit stroke for a future where learning allows flexibility across space and time learning is personalized and competency based and many forms of success is recognized their idea was to establish the village learning hub a community resource inspired by micro schooling and flexi schooling to provide resources to families on homeschooling including personalized learning pathways so we are eight months in in this journey and we've already started to see some remarkable shifts that being said a challenge for us as grantors where how do we measure such shifts when we're working on 10-year intervals it required us to really rethink the reporting that we're asking from grantees and so let's take a look how guarantees are reporting their progress thus far and so these are actual tolls that we have deployed to our guarantees we've asked them to think about successes so when they reflect upon what has happened thus far we ask them to identify some key shifts that they've experienced we ask them to identify what that shift is what action did they take in their environment to catalyze these shifts and what were the key conditions for the success we really are interested in thinking about these shifts these successes that happen on various levels especially when we're looking to catalyze systems level change and so in the same way we we asked them to brainstorm or to think about in terms of the shifts that they've seen what levels within the system are they seeing this we understand that in these early days many of these shifts will probably be at the individual or social environment level we're eager to see how these could over time really lead to policy level shifts however and then lastly we're equally equally interested in failures or not yet successive what have our grantees tried that didn't yield the results that they were hoping to see so in the same sense we asked them to identify what what were the shifts that they wanted to see what actions did they take and what conditions would be needed if they were to do this over what would they have to do differently with the goal of yielding these shifts and then lastly the systemic barriers as they think about what is then what is standing in the way of their success this is a space for them to start brainstorming the different barriers that exist within their system barriers and which might be levers that they can really play upon in the future so again we're still quite early in the implementation of these ideas but some of our initial reporting so with the california area school district again they're iep for all students they've piloted student design all their pilot students designed their ideal curriculum so they were provided that time to create a curriculum they're actually starting to see some early policy shifts in the sense that their board of directors are working on local school policies to allow students to be in compliance with local school policy including gpa grade levels and advancements a huge barrier that they identified that they were not anticipating or just some of those qualifying things that letter grades provide and so specifically one of the biggest barriers that they found was around athletics eligibility without a grade point average students couldn't compete in sports so they had to overcome that barrier with hatch our play-based curriculum for early learners some of their successes they created personal personalized play profiles for each of the students in their class for teachers to more thoughtfully integrate play into the early elementary curriculum and they're already finding other educators becoming more interested in play-based pedagogies policy barriers that they're encountering include a hyper focus on academics that dissuades more buy-in to authentic hands-on learning centered in play and so um in the design of this grant opportunity we found inspiration in both some regional publications and national publications remake learning put out two publications about pandemic and post-pandemic learning that really provided a basis for this opportunity additionally we want to recognize radical thinking for equitable futures which really provided a framing for our grant application as well as aasas learning 2025 and design principles for community-based settings again want to acknowledge our grant funders for this the grebel foundation the claude worthington benidorm foundation rk mellon foundation and the henry l hillman foundation as well as two thought leaders who really have been in this journey with us the allegheny intermediate unit and knowledge works again this will be uh these are investments that we're hoping to see trigger transformation over the course of the next decade we invite you to come along this journey with us to learn with us learn from us uh ways that you can do that are follow us on social media at remake learning add yourself to the remake learning directory and sign up for emails and various information that we share periodically thank you for this opportunity again my name is tyler feel free to reach out if you have any questions [Music]