with Tyler Samstag, Executive Director of Remake Learning, April 3, 2025.
In this session Tyler shared the tactics, theory, and impact of ecosystem stewardship based on the nearly 20-years of Remake Learning, a learning ecosystem in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Key points from the presentation:
The Pittsburgh Context
- Pittsburgh has a legacy as the “Steel City”, decimated in the 1980s when the steel industry was outsourced. The city reinvented itself, investing heavily in higher education, healthcare, and technology, making it home to institutions like Carnegie Mellon University.
- Remake Learning taps into two key regional legacies: innovation/industry (the Steel City) and care/intentionality (Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, which was filmed in Pittsburgh and leveraged television as a new technology for learning).
The Remake Learning Ecosystem
- Mission: To spark engaging, relevant, and equitable opportunities to enrich Pittsburgh’s learning ecosystem.
- Origin: The movement began in 2007, coinciding with the introduction of the first iPhone, when educators wrestled with the role of new technology in teaching and learning. Early participants saw this as an opportunity for a new generation of learners and educators.
- Evolution of Focus: The network’s focus evolved over time:
- Initial: Role of technology in education.
- 5 years: Sparking creativity in learning.
- Later: Bridging together school and community learning, highlighting the many places that young people live, work, and play.
- Approaching 20 years: Sustaining and intentionally scaling a vibrant, thriving ecosystem and supporting other regions in creating learning ecosystems.
- Broad View of Learning: Remake Learning views the ecosystem broadly, including not just schools, but also museums, libraries, community centers, and parks as learning environments. Educators are also seen broadly, encompassing classroom teachers, peers, families, caregivers, mentors, industry partners, and employers.
Ecosystem Stewardship: The Five C’s Strategy
Tyler Samstag defines the role of Remake Learning as stewards of the ecosystem through five key network support strategies:
- Convene: Bring people together across organizations and sectors regularly to build trust and relationships, often around food. Strategies include the annual Network Assembly and “pulse checks” to surface emergent topics of interest.
- Coordinate: Bring people together in a coordinated way around shared topics of interest to collectively push thinking. This involves creating working groups focused on areas like civic learning.
- Catalyze: Offer catalytic support (through grants, from $500 to larger amounts) to bring “unorthodox ideas” and new partnerships to life. The current grant opportunity is the “Moonshot Grant,” which asks organizations to test ideas that move toward a preferred future of learning 10-15 years ahead.
- Communicate: Create communication tools to act as a hub and break down silos. This includes capturing and elevating stories of transformed learning through picture, video, and written word, and pitching stories of joyful, innovative learning to the press.
- Celebrate: Provide time and space to elevate and celebrate the success and joy of being an educator. The primary method is Remake Learning Days, a festival started in 2016 where organizations open their doors to showcase hands-on learning, specifically engaging parents and caregivers as key educators alongside their children. This has expanded nationally and internationally.
Examples of Ecosystem Impact
- School Design: Seneca Valley School District partnered with the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh and a design firm to build an elementary school that mirrors the self-directed learning experience of a children’s museum.
- Museum Lab: The Children’s Museum acquired a library to create a Museum Lab for tweens (ages 12-15). It is a physical location that brings together formal K-12 education, museum education, and higher education (Carnegie Mellon’s Entertainment Technology Center) under one roof.
- Suburban General: A partnership between a hospital system and a school is revamping a decommissioned hospital into a community hub. The physical location houses the school (taking up an entire floor), operational doctors’ offices, and a plethora of startups, manifesting the ecosystem’s collaborative efforts.
Philosophical Approach and Funding
- The core ethos is “we work better when we work together”.
- Remake Learning’s publications form an “Ecosystem Trilogy”: the Remake Learning Playbook (tactical guide), Pittsburgh Principles (philosophical approach), and Shift (system-level impact).
- The network is primarily funded through philanthropic support and some state funding for Remake Learning Days.
- Crucially, the foundations in Pittsburgh are treated as members of the ecosystem, not just funders.
Knowledge Base Categories: 1) Future of Weaving, 2) Fundraising & Strategy
