Shining a Light on Education Innovation

As an educator, it’s my goal to help the next generation of kids excel. In my third year as principal, I’ve reached a career goal by bringing our “C” school grade to an “A”! We were the only school in our area to jump 100 points this year! Isn’t that amazing? I’m always intrigued to learn how other school districts are making a difference in their communities, and recently learned about the unique educational innovations coming out of the Pittsburg region. This post was written in partnership with The Motherhood and sponsored by The Grable Foundation. Photos courtesy of Remake Learning and Ben Filio.

Shining a Light on Education Innovation

HundrED is a global organization based in Finland that aims to research and share education innovations across the globe. When people normally think of innovation in education their mind thinks of adding more technology, but that is only a small part of being an innovative educator. HundrED looks to share innovative ideas about more than just edtech. They scour the globe looking for creative scalable ideas in 5 broad categories: skills, teachers, assessment, learning environments, and leadership. Education is changing in America, but there is a need for improvement, so HundrED is searching for innovation in the breadth of skills, inclusion, and diversity, educators, holistic wellbeing, assessment, personalized learning, global citizenship, leadership, youth, and basic education. All of these components deserve attention. This year HundrED is collaborating with Grable Foundation and Remake Learning to spotlight Pittsburgh. Spotlights explore each location or theme thoroughly to provide deep insight into the Spotlight area (Pittsburgh) and share a collection of the most inspiring innovations emerging in that area with the rest of the world. Pittsburgh is the first North American city selected by HundrED for a spotlight of the innovation happening in area schools! Out of 82 submissions, HundrED selected 12 Pittsburgh-area programs to share as models of innovation for education innovation around the globe. The 12 programs get to travel to Helsinki, Finland to present their education innovations at the HundrED Global Innovation Summit in November of this year. How cool is that! Why was Pittsburgh selected? For more than a decade, educators in the Pittsburgh region have been taking risks, reaching higher, and pushing the limits of learning. Rallying under the banner of Remake Learning, Pittsburgh is home to a deeply connected and highly coordinated education innovation ecosystem. Due to their efforts a high concentration of innovations that hold the potential to help children flourish. With the growth of Remake Learning over the past 12+ years, Pittsburgh has become a recognized leader in learning and education innovation nationally and internationally. To learn more about these incredible innovations, visit https://hundred.org/en/collections/pittsburgh. Simple Interactions Created by the Fred Rogers Center, Simple Interactions is a collaboratively developed, freely accessible set of tools and resources to guide teachers, parents, social workers, policymakers, and others to recognize and promote the most important resources in children’s lives–their adult helpers. Developed first for use in China with orphanage caregivers to discover their own powerful practices helping orphans with disabilities, collaborative teams based in Pittsburgh have since adapted the tools for use in low-resource childcare centers, high-poverty public schools, out-of-school youth development programs, Children’s Hospitals, museums and maker spaces, group homes, and with crossing guards on street corners. If you’re looking for ways to enrich your community education innovation, head to hundred.org.  

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