This spring, Remake Learning moved from ideas into action. Across the region, people came together to strengthen relationships, explore shared challenges, and turn aspirations into bold steps forward. New connections formed at neighborhood gatherings. Thousands of families experienced learning in communities across Pennsylvania and beyond. Educators worked together to rethink civics education, personalized learning, and AI literacy.
Taken together, these moments demonstrate what learning ecosystems do best: helping communities respond to change together.
Strengthening the Neighborhood
Meet Your Neighbors
This spring, we continued our new Meet Your Neighbors series with gatherings at Junior Achievement of Western Pennsylvania on March 24 and Bella Terra Stables on May 21.
Together, the two events welcomed more than 80 members of the Pittsburgh learning ecosystem for informal opportunities to connect, explore learning environments, and build relationships with colleagues from across the region.
Meet Your Neighbor events are intentionally simple. By opening their doors and bringing people together, ecosystem partners create opportunities for relationships to form before anyone knows exactly where those relationships might lead.
Remake Learning Days
We celebrated the 10th edition of Remake Learning Days throughout May, marking more than a decade since the festival first began here in Southwestern Pennsylvania. This year, 263 events invited children, youth, and families to explore hands-on learning experiences hosted by schools, museums, libraries, community organizations, parks, and other learning spaces across the Southwestern Pennsylvania region.
Across Pennsylvania, Remake Learning Days has grown into a truly statewide celebration. With support from the Pennsylvania Department of Education and the Allegheny Intermediate Unit, the 2026 festival stretched across 9 regions, connecting families with learning opportunities in communities across the Commonwealth. The festival also continued its partnership with Career Ready PA, connecting hands-on experiences with career exploration: 404 events were Career Ready PA-approved, and students submitted 9,633 artifacts through the Backpack Challenge across 160 school buildings and 111 local education agencies.
And the celebration extended well beyond Pennsylvania. In 2026, Remake Learning Days festivals took place in Badgerland, Wisconsin; Kansas City; Knoxville, Tennessee; Florida’s Suncoast region; West Virginia; Doncaster, United Kingdom; and Uruguay, alongside pop-up events in additional communities. What began in Southwestern Pennsylvania a decade ago has become a shared model for communities around the world to invite families into the places where learning happens and experience it together.
Turning Emerging Priorities Into Action
Pulse Check Moonshot Grants
Last year, our Pulse Check conversations invited educators and partners to take stock of opportunities and challenges facing the learning ecosystem, starting with Outdoor Learning and AI in Education. This spring, we announced nine new Pulse Check Moonshot Grants supporting bold ideas that emerged from those conversations.
Like all Moonshots, these projects begin with asking big questions about what’s possible and then bringing different perspectives together to test possible answers.
Building a Regional Approach to AI Literacy
One of the most consequential questions facing educators today is how young people should learn about and engage with artificial intelligence.
With support from the Richard King Mellon Foundation, Remake Learning is partnering with Quill.org and CodeJoy to develop and pilot a regional approach to AI literacy.
During the spring, we convened industry roundtables where 12 AI researchers and industry leaders explored the future of AI, the opportunities and tensions it presents, and Pittsburgh’s distinctive role in the evolving landscape. This summer, we engaged 16 teachers and instructional leaders from Allegheny and Westmoreland counties in a weeklong professional learning experience to define AI literacy, evaluate classroom resources, and identify what meaningful AI literacy should look like for students.
Resources from Quill will be piloted in schools in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties during the 2026–27 school year. Ultimately, the initiative will produce teacher-ready, open-source curriculum and a scalable model for implementing AI literacy across K–12 classrooms.
Transforming Learning Together
Future-Driven Schools
The Future-Driven Schools cohort continued to grow, welcoming Indiana Area, Sto-Rox, and Bethel Park school districts and bringing the initiative to 50 participating districts.
The year’s cohort experience culminated on May 14 with educators and leaders gathering to share progress and explore how schools can continue adapting to prepare young people for a changing world. Pennsylvania Secretary of Education Carrie Rowe and Secretary of Labor & Industry Nancy Walker joined the gathering, alongside leaders Carnegie Learning founder Steve Ritter and AASA leader John Malloy.
Something in Common
On May 14, the Civic Learning Ecosystem hosted Something in Common: Reimagining Civic Life in partnership with History Co:Lab. Held at SLB Radio’s Youth Media Center, the event was part of the Henry Luce Foundation’s national listening tour exploring how Americans can strengthen the spaces where people participate in civic life and engage directly with one another.
Young people helped co-create the gathering and joined adults from across the community for an evening built around listening. Through one-on-one conversations, group discussions, and intergenerational dialogue, participants practiced engaging with people whose experiences and perspectives differed from their own.
Personalized Learning Summit
On June 16, the Personalized Learning Working Group convened educators, students, and leaders from across Southwestern Pennsylvania for a one-day Personalized Learning Summit focused on advancing personalized, learner-centered education.
Participants explored personalized learning through the perspectives of the people leading and experiencing the work every day. Conversations addressed instructional shifts, student empowerment, learner agency, systems leadership, and the conditions necessary to make personalized learning possible.
Importantly, the day also created time for action. District and school teams reflected on their own priorities and planned next steps, while peer dialogues dug deeper into challenges including operationalizing Portraits of a Graduate, using policy flexibility to rethink school structures, and developing competency-based approaches to assessment and demonstrations of mastery.
From Pittsburgh to the Field
ASU+GSV
At the ASU+GSV Summit in San Diego in April, Remake Learning co-hosted “The Future: Face to Face” with AERDF, LearnerStudio, and the Reinvention Lab.
The interactive event brought together nearly 100 educational leaders and technologists to engage in honest discussion about a human-first future for learning.
Launching the Next Moonshots
June ended with another important step forward for ideas first explored at Forge Futures 2.0 in Nashville in February. Remake Learning selected and awarded 15 National Moonshot Grants to participants of the February summit.
The portfolio explores some of the most significant questions facing education today. Grantees are experimenting with new pathways, environments, and learning experiences; more connected, flexible, and responsive systems; and collaborative community learning ecosystems.
Looking Ahead
A thriving learning ecosystem is all about turning ideas into collective action, and that’s what we’ve been doing over these four months. Bringing people together, identifying challenges and opportunities, imagining possibilities, and then, critically, doing something about them.
We’ll bring that spirit together again on September 25 at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh for the 2026 Remake Learning Assembly, a celebration and interactive showcase of the people, ideas, and partnerships shaping the future of learning across our region.
After a spring filled with experimentation, connection, and action, I’m looking forward to seeing the neighborhood together again and imagining what we’ll build next.
Authored by:
Tyler Samstag
Remake Learning Executive Director