Collab Labs

10 Years of Collab Labs – What’s next?

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs

A few weeks ago we closed out our 10th year of Collab Labs with a session at UWM focused on TRUE Skool’s Legacy Project to develop a new campus for their programming, with youth engaged in all phases of that effort. That session was led by a team of UWM students as the capstone project for Ed Policy 609 – Community Partnerships, which used our spring Collab Labs as a focal point of their work. In the background, a second team of students from the class was exploring the role Collab Labs play for attendees and what shape they might take going forward.

As many of you know, after 35 years in Milwaukee, I moved to Duluth during the pandemic with the birth of a first grandchild. With schools shut down, we ran the series on Zoom (for a much smaller audience) over the 2020-21 school year, before returning to in-person sessions in a new home at MSOE’s STEM Center. Joost’s cancer was diagnosed midway through our 9th season. As it progressed , we planned this year’s Collab Labs with a series of partners who help guide and facilitate the sessions, and started thinking about what the future of Collab Labs might look like. With his passing, and a seven hour commute from Duluth for me, it’s time to figure out where Collab Labs head from here.

Some Context

It might help to offer a little context. We started Learn Deep with the recognition that despite enthusiasm for offering students a richer set of experiences among both educators and potential partners in industry, higher-ed, and others in the broader community, those who wanted to see a change, often operated within their own narrow silos. The lack of visibility among those willing to collaborate and the friction required to overcome it, meant good ideas went forward with limited support and narrowed views of what was possible. We saw Collab Labs as a venue to bring educators together with community partners, explore where passions and goals align, and uncover opportunities for collaboration– a way create the the missing connections and reduce the friction of collaboration.

It’s through working together in support of aligned goals that we build the relationships and trust necessary for true collaboration. It’s how we remove the friction inherent in collaboration within or across organization boundaries.  It is how we learn more about the capabilities partners bring, and what it takes to work effectively together, and see new possibilities.  Nothing interesting happens in a classroom without a teacher willing to say yes, so since our inception, we’ve focused on helping teachers build connections, explore opportunities, and take on new challenges.  Collab Labs have played a central role in all of that.

 

When the Ed Policy class got going this spring, I put together a Kumu map (pictured above) to illustrate the role Collab Labs have played in building the relationships, programs, projects, and experience that allowed us to pull together our current collaboration with UWM Mathematics faculty, STEAM Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Out of School Time Alliance (WOSTA) and TRUE Skool. It’s a story of what becomes possible through 10 years of building relationships, testing out possibilities, and seeing connections. It’s a story of the impact the simple act of getting educators in the same room with folks from the broader community can have. (Since I put the Kumu map together in February, our Collaboration with TRUE Skool has been central to two more Collab Labs, and with them, new sets of partners, projects, and opportunities. The connections, relationships and possibilities continue to grow.)

We ran our first Collab Labs in August of 2016 as experiments, first with a small group of teachers, followed a week later with a small group of school leaders. We took what we learned from those efforts to put together Collab Lab 3 and the structure which has become familiar to participants since then:

  • Focus the discussion on a topic of interest
  • Recruit featured participants from education, industry, higher-ed, and nonprofits who can offer a unique or useful perspective
  • Keep it free and open and serve tasty food
  • Provide room for participants to be heard and to hear the goals and passions of their fellow attendees
  • Lay the groundwork for something to move forward

I pulled together some stats as we wrapped up this season. Across the 76 Collab Labs we have run since 2016, we’ve been joined by more than 800 participants representing 300+ organizations — schools, companies, higher-education and cultural institutions, nonprofits, and state and local governments. Those conversations and connections spawned more 40 projects connecting educators with community partners, and brought in the support and engagement of another 300 professionals and more than 400 students enrolled at UWM, MSOE, Marquette, MATC, and MIAD as clients, collaborators, and mentors. I can only guess at the numbers of K-12 students impacted by this work, but between what educators and partners have brought back from Collab Labs to the students they work with and the projects where we’ve been directly involved, it’s safe to say we are well into the thousands.  Mapping only educators and professionals the connections between Collab Labs, Projects, and People illustrates the role of Collab Labs as the entry point to a rich network of folks working to offer students something more.

What the Ed Policy 609 Team Found

The Ed Policy team interviewed a number of Collab Lab attendees from both inside and outside of K-12, some who attend on a regular basis, and others who’ve come more sporadically.  Here’s what they heard:

The Value Collab Labs Provide

Cross-Sector Networking and Breaking Down Silos

  • Collab Labs fill a distinct gap in Milwaukee by serving as one of the only consistent spaces where individuals from education, nonprofits, businesses, and the broader community share the same room.
  • Attendees value stepping outside their normal everyday circles to build relationships with people they might not otherwise meet. They appreciate finding other “catalysts” who are seriously engaged in thinking about teaching, learning, and creativity.
  • Educational and community work can often feel individualistic or overwhelming; attendees share that the collaborative environment helps them feel less isolated and reminds them they are part of a larger supportive community.

Fostering Creativity and Practical Learning Models

  • Attendees highlight that the nonjudgmental, flexible structure allows them to think creatively, share ideas freely, and experiment without the fear of failure.
  • Teachers appreciate how the labs emphasize hands-on, project-based learning styles. They find the environment critical for learning how to keep students motivated and help them apply academic knowledge to real-world situations.
  • The collaborative engagement has been eye-opening, with opportunities to talk with individuals from diverse backgrounds, think and reflect more deeply about their own practices and what might be possible.

Resource Sharing and Community Awareness

  • Teachers appreciate being able to break out of their institutional silos to build a network of professionals they can directly tap.
  • For informal educators and community partners, the labs provide a platform for active listening, allowing them to better understand both the struggles teachers face and what they hope to offer their students.
  • Educators value the ideas and solutions which come out of Collab Lab discussions that they can take back to their own schools.

Looking Forward

The team also provided a number of suggestions for what a sustainable model might look like going forward:

Shifting to a Shared Leadership and Distributed Governance Model

There was broad consensus around evolving toward a shared governance model where responsibility for planning and facilitation is distributed across multiple participating organizations. In practice, this might involve rotating facilitators, community-sourcing session topics, and embedding a peer-mentorship structure where veteran participants guide newcomers. It was also suggested that we identify and designate internal champions within partner institutions to intentionally drive and sustain attendance from within their respective organizations.

Facilitation

Some of the interviewees noted that sessions have occasionally become unfocused or frustrating, without strong direction. As the team looks at a evolving to a shared leadership structure one suggestion is to develop a facilitator training model. This training could function as a professional development, creating a new leadership pipeline.

Scheduling, Access, and Logistics

With a few exceptions for special sessions or to align with other events, Collab Labs have been held on the 2nd Thursday of the month. While the time frame doesn’t work for everyone, our thought has been that a regular cadence makes it easier for regular attendees to plan around. By and large, the team favors more flexible scheduling, alternating the days or times for sessions across a series. They also suggest aligning select Collab Labs directly with school districts’ existing professional development days or other initiatives so that attendance feels like an extension of an educator’s core duties rather than an added burden. Transportation times can always get in the way, particularly for students who may want to attend. The team’s suggestions include rotating host locations based on the topic, allowing the labs to travel to different schools, introducing hybrid/virtual attendance options, and providing alternative transportation for participating students.

Formalizing Institutional Partnerships

Much of what we’ve pulled together over the years has come from informal relationships with educators and community partners. The team recommends a shift  to  building formalized commitments with community systems and institutions. This would include establishing concrete co-hosting agreements with K-12, university, industry, or nonprofit partners. With a rotating set of host sites willing to absorb the logistical responsibility and cost of providing food and drinks for attendees, the organizational overhead could be more widely distributed

Establishing Continuous Engagement and Actionable Impact

The team recommends a shift from standalone meetings toward a framework of continuous engagement. This would include building bridging mechanisms between sessions, such as secondary follow-up meetings, or smaller project-based working cohorts. They’d like to see Collab Labs explicitly connect the high level discussions of the sessions to tangible, actionable initiatives so that participants see the direct impact of their collaborative efforts.

Implementing Evaluation Systems and Tangible Incentives

To track growth and more quickly adapt, the team suggests introducing formal feedback structures—such as post-session surveys and reflection circles—to capture participant input. Gathering these qualitative reflections and success stories would also allow us to  document the social and educational impact of Collab Labs to potential funders. They also suggest developing structural incentives to guarantee robust educator participation, such as partnering with district leaders to offer formal paid service hours to teachers who attend Collab Lab sessions.

So Now What?

The work of the Ed Policy 609 team confirmed a lot of what Joost and I have talked about over the the years in terms of both what works, and the shifts we ought to explore.  Some conversations around the future of Collab Labs have already started, and those will continue over the summer. I think the strongest possibility follows the shared governance recommendations of the team– e.g. pull together a set of partner institutions who might each host a session. Ideally, they would do so in collaboration with one or more schools or youth serving organizations where the sessions could help further the ideas or projects educators and their students want to pursue. I’m also intrigued by the idea of developing a talent pipeline for facilitating sessions. For pre-service teachers helping to organize and run a Collab Lab could be a great way to understand what they are likely to encounter as educators while building a professional network of individuals within and beyond K-12 with a predisposition to help.

If you’d like to help figure out what this could look like or have another idea for how Collab Labs might be offered, let me know. We have the summer to figure something out.

Thanks

I’m grateful for Ben Trager’s willingness to engage his Ed Policy 609 students (Naiya Gairy, Torrance Harris, Yasmeen Mahmoud, Tyrone Richmond, Megan Shannon, Wassegahming Two Thunders, and Ella Willison) in this work and their contributions of towards the recommendations noted above.  Thanks also to those who made themselves available to meet with Ben’s students.

Most of all, thanks to all who have joined us at Collab Lab, connected us with someone new, suggested a topic, or helped us plan and run a session. It’s your engagement that made Collab Labs what they have been, and it has been a privilege to see what has come out of those efforts.

 

— Pete

Collab Lab 76: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs , ,

We wrapped up our 10th season of Collab Labs on May 13th at UWM to cap of their Experiential Learning Showcase.

In a fit of meta, the session:

  • highlighted the collaborative efforts of TRUE Skool and students within the School of Architecture’s Community Design Solutions (CDS) to explore design concepts for a new campus for TRUE Skool,
  • our discussion focused on further opportunities to engage K-12 students and community partners throughout the visioning, design and development process of that campus,
  • was facilitated by UWM students in Ben Trager’s Ed Policy course on Community Partnerships as the final project of their experiential learning with Collab Labs this semester.

CDS & TRUE Skool

CDS’s Director, Krisann Rehbein joined TRUE Skool Co-Executive Director to share the process they developed for a design workshop series for TRUE Skool youth and the outputs of those efforts. Over the course of several weeks, TRUE Skool students explored spatial thinking, user experience and and design approaches to develop visions for how a new facility might better serve students involved in TRUE Skools programming.  They shared as well how the ideas students developed over that series now serve as input for the architecture firm HGA as the vision for a new campus is carried forward.

Discussion

With that as context, the Ed Policy students took over to a lead a process that explored opportunities for students at the elementary, middle, or high school level, to engage further around the design and development of a new campus, with an emphasis on reciprocity. In that exercise, they challenged us to view those opportunities through a lens of reciprocity. How might those be structured so that the commitments and benefits participants make and receive as part of a collaborative effort flow in both directions.

Fidel closed out the evening leading a full group discussion on what’s required to engage students in taking on real-world community issues, and what suggests we ought to target in a vision for what school might become.

Thanks

A big thanks to:

  • Ben Trager and UWM’s Center for Student Experience and Talent for both hosting the session and working with us to engage his Ed Policy students throughout the semester to attend our Collab Labs and run this session.
  • Krisann & Fidel for working with the team to both set up the discussion and carry it forward.
  • Ed Policy 609 students Shana Brown, Chamomile Hauser, Pulcherie Grace Kouokam Noumsi, Alexis Martinez , Jaqueline Pinto Md Shahrin, Ethan Parker, Colonia Roberts, Bela Raymundo, and Irving Velazquez for joining us throughout the semester, and facilitating the discussion.
  • The several TRUE Skool students who joined the discussion and were able to share both the value they get out of being part of the process as well as the challenges they still see as we try and get it right.

 

Collab Lab 75 Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs

 

The focus for April’s session was Collaborative Approaches to Healing Math Trauma, and it proved to be a great opportunity to share ideas and approaches with math educators serving students from early elementary through college. Folded into the mix we had folks from several nonprofit organizations looking at how they might leverage the hands on work they do with students as an opportunity to support positive math experiences.

We began the session with a chance for participants to try their hands at solving Skyscraper puzzles from the Julia Robinson Math Festivals. Participants worked in groups of 2 or 3 to solve progressively harder challenges and talk through strategies to solve these sudoku like puzzles. This gave us a common starting point to talk through what the experience was like for participants, and how that might differ from the more typical they or their students may be accustomed to.

Naturally enough, attendees described some initial tension and performance anxiety, but they felt that fade as they collaborated with tablemates to talk through each puzzle.  Qualities of that experience which stood out include 

  • The buzz of productive conversation
  • The activity was easy to access
  • Working with one or more partners allowed teams to approach the puzzles from multiple perspectives, with each team member seeing some aspect of the puzzle that others may have missed.
  • Having physical objects to arrange as puzzle solutions encouraged visual problem solving, and sparked ideas and realizations that provided opportunities for participants to share their logic and reasoning.

This led us into discussions about this experiences differs from those students might more typically have within a math class. Across our discussion groups, participants noted several key differences:

  • Compliance vs. Problem Solving– math instruction is more often compliance-focused rather than built on genuine problem solving
  • Lack of Agency: Students often lack the agency to build their own thinking skills, and the teacher to “save them”
  • Transactional Nature: For many, a math course is seen merely as a hurdle to graduation or an apprenticeship rather than a tool for life.
  • The Safety of Disengagement:  Because of the stress involved, many students find that checking out feels safer than facing negative emotions or the risk of failure

Participants also identified several core elements they wish were more prevalent in math instruction.

  • Productive Struggle: There is a strong desire to see students engage in productive struggle within a culture that forgives errors and values figuring out over simply getting the right answer
  • Agency and Reflection: Learning should provide students with the agency to critique and communicate while giving them the space to reflect on their own thinking
  • Tactile and Creative Learning: The use of tactile materials, visual and physical models can serve as a hook to make abstract concepts more accessible
  • Joy and Identity:  Math should be an opportunity for students to build a mathematical identity and experience the joy in exploring mathematical ideas, collaboration, and creative application of mathematical concepts.

We reference healing math trauma in the title of the Collab Lab. That’s a phrase we’ve been using in our work with math folks over the years. The experience of too many students, caregivers, and educators have had with math education has left them with a certain level of fear when they hear the word math. What brought attendees to our session was a recognition of how common that fear is, how it impacts not only students but educators, so we spent some time to dig into that a bit and understand what they see from their perspectives:

  • Generational and Institutional Trauma: Both teachers and students often carry their own math trauma, which can be exacerbated by frustrated parents at home. In a classic vicious cycle, a educator who fears teaching math leaves a student confused, the confused student asks a parent or caregiver for help, and they feel unable to do so.  It allows everyone in that chain to feel a sense of failure– he teacher has failed to teach, the student has failed to learn, and the caregiver has failed to help.
  • The Math Person Myth:A major hurdle is the persistent belief in the myth of math people vs. non-math people, which creates an extra layer of social status in the classroom. Somehow it becomes ok to ignore the notion of a growth mindset when it comes to math.
  • Systemic Barriers: The current system often focuses on grades over life skills, and many students are effectively locked out opportunities by rigid requirements for math, and limited supports or practices that can help a student meet them
  • Abstract Meaninglessness:  Because math is often taught as purely abstract, it becomes difficult for students to assign meaning to it, leading to a disconnect between the subject and their real lives.

Despite the challenges, facilitators noted several promising frameworks and strategies.

  • Restorative Frameworks: The CIRCL framework (Carnegie Math Pathways) in use at MATC and restorative assessment (filling gaps rather than retaking whole courses) offer a more humane way to handle remediation
  • Art and Interest-Based Learning: Using art, film, fashion, or dance as a medium to teach STEM can draw students in and facilitate deeper thinking about how math is used in the real world
  • Real-World Application: Successful models include exposing the math within construction and other trades, and experiential learning that connects different disciplines
  • Family Engagement: Programs like Parent University and family math nights can help address the home-to-school transfer of math anxiety
  • Pedagogical Shifts: that connect math to the shared experiences of teachers and students both groups to start from a position of knowing before shifting to the abstract.

Some closing thoughts

This was our 75th Collab Lab, which puts us one away from the close of 10 years of bringing educators and community partners together to explore what’s possible. The large turnout we had for the session is a clear demonstration of the passion in Milwaukee to do something more for our students and to do so together. Since our first session back in 2016 more than 800 teachers, professionals, and students have joined us at a Collab Lab to share their ideas, connect across silos, and find things to work on together. The experiments, projects, and initiatives that Collab Labs have given rise to have pulled in more than 300 additional educators and professionals looking to support the innovative work that teachers and students have taken on. Those projects have also provided opportunities for 450+ college students to lend their support as collaborators, resources, or near peer mentors. It takes a village, and seeing it grow has been an honor.

Following April’s Collab Lab We we’re heartened to see requests from educators and organizations looking for ways to join, support, and extend efforts to offer Milwaukee teachers, students, and families a much richer set of math experiences and opportunities to heal some of the math trauma they or those they work with or care for may have experienced.  If you’d like to be part of that, let us know. We’re looking for additional partners for Family Math Nights and to start a Math Circles program for teachers.

None of our math efforts would be possible without the merry band we’ve come to refer to as the Milwaukee Math Collaborative, and who were there last week to share the joy they find in math: Gabriella Pinter (UWM), Leah Rosenbaum (STEAM Milwaukee), Bernie Traversari (WOSTA), and Danielle Robinson (MPS)

Thanks also to MSOE and the MSOE STEM Center for another year of hosting Collab Labs. Our final session of the year will be at UWM on May 13th. as part of their Experiential Learning Showcase.

Resources

The Skyscraper challenges we shared are drawn from the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festivals collection of puzzles and activities. We draw heavily from that collection for the activities used at Family Math Nights.

STEAM Milwaukee has a lending library of STEM materials that includes a number of math activities and resources, included the Skyscraper puzzle sets we used during the Collab Lab. 

 

Collab Lab 74: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs , , ,

Discussion in our March Collab Lab focused on the role visual design and communication can play in STEM.  We started the conversation by asking…

“What can visual design and communication skills bring to how students engage with STEM?”

Across our discussion groups, several themes emerged:

Real-World Application: Visual design and communication skills equip students with a new set of tools to explore real-world issues, and at the same time, exploration of real-world issues provide rich opportunities to develop those skills.

Cognitive Scaffolding and Conceptual Clarity: As an alternative to rote memorization, engaging in design and modeling can help making complex ideas more accessible and allow students build a deeper understanding of abstract concepts.

Lowering Barriers to Engagement: Visual design acts as a familiar and low-stakes”entry point or on-ramp that can spark curiosity and personalize the learning experience for students who might otherwise feel intimidated by the subject.

Psychological Safety and Iterative Thinking: The design process fosters a growth mindset by encouraging risk-taking, divergent thinking, and the acceptance of critique, shifting the focus from “finding the one right answer” to process-oriented iteration.

Collaborative Problem-Solving and Agency: Effective communication norms and visual tools empower students to share diverse perspectives, identify real-world problems, and move from frustration toward actionable, solution-oriented thinking.

The Power of Materiality and Tangibility: The specific choice of materials can serve as a physical catalyst that shifts a student’s brain from passive observation to active, sensory-rich experimentation.

Disciplined Observation and Relational Thinking: Visual design trains students to “drill down” on what they are seeing to understand the proximity and relationships between objects, fostering the same observational skills required for scientific inquiry.

Emotional Processing and Personal Agency: By providing a path to move from frustration over a issue toward solutions thinking, design gives students a productive way to process the emotional challenges of difficult STEM problems and claim personal ownership over their work.

From there we move the discussion to…

“Where do we see gaps in developing these skills?”

Here too we saw some interesting themes emerge:

The Metric Mismatch: There is a fundamental values gap between what we would like to see (creativity, confidence, joy) and what school systems measure/value:  standardized test scores, progress towards credit requirements, and stable schedules.

The “Basics” vs. “Application” Tug-of-War
When visual design/communication in STEM work is an add on at the end of an exploration, rather than a means to explore, the time allocated to this effort becomes secondary to ensuring that students have the basics down. In effect, we ignore the notion that the application of concept is, in itself, an opportunity to understand it more deeply.

Structural Scarcity of Time and Space: Schedules in K-12 don’t support the slower nature of design, iteration, and project-based learning. Without the space and time to get messy, experiment, fail and try again, students are forced to work in a system that asks for the right answer now.

Cultural and Generational Drag:
It’s not just the schools—it’s the surrounding ecosystem. Parent expectations are often rooted in a “how it used to be” mindset, and school leadership may lack the forethought to prioritize interdisciplinary connections over traditional silos.

Equity and Resource Gaps
There is a glaring gap in access. The difference in funding across private, charter and public schools can mean that for many schools, materials and facilities are often a luxury rather than a standard tool for learning.

We ended our discussion with one final question:

What concrete opportunities can you see to develop these skills as part of students’ STEM experiences?

Here are groups took a couple of different paths.

Practices to adopt

  • Break out of the box
  • Find opportunities to make connections real and concrete in learning
  • Experiential learning strategies
  • Walk across the hall to connect with colleagues in different disciplines
  • Recognize that what you spend time on is a priority
  • Work with the rage and frustration within a broken system to bring in some light and joy

Some specific opportunities

  • Is there a faculty member in the College of Arts & Architecture at UWM open to having their students work with elementary school math teachers as a service/experiential learning opportunity?
  • MIAD already has a program in place to work with K-12 art teachers. What could it look like if MIAD could include STEM teachers in that?

Thanks

A big thanks to the MSOE STEM Center for hosting us, and to all of our featured participants:

Kristin Steinbach Holtz — Experiential Learning Manager, MIAD
Jodi Schomaker — Senior Manager of Creative & Design, Discovery World
Paul Mech – Director of Education, Discovery World
Dr. Aaron Robert Atencio — Research Curator Cultural Sciences, Milwaukee Public Museum

Collab Lab 73 Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs , , , , ,

Last week’s Collab Lab brought together the folks who coordinate and support experiential learning at UWM, Marquette, MSOE, MIAD, and MATC together for a discussion focused on how we might connect experiential learning opportunities in higher-ed to those in K-12 with benefits to all sides.

Goals

We began the discussion but asking what we hope experiential learning can offer to students as well as educators, in higher-ed, or within K-12. While the group called out a few direct impacts– public service, skill development, exposure to new environments, the opportunity to make connections to material presented in the classroom, it was what might happen that seemed to offer a greater spark. The greatest value in experiential learning may come from the unanticipated impact, a passion is ignited in a student that sends them on an unforeseen journey, they gain insight into and empathy for the lives of others, they feel empowered to set a course for their own lives.

More goals came out, even as the discussion moved on, in particular, that experiential learning opportunities could help pave a path of success, a livable wage, and meaningful work.

Capabilities

Our next point of discussion focused on the capabilities and opportunities that higher-ed and K-12 can bring to support experiential learning.  It’s a long list.

Context

  • Sense of belonging
  • Uniqueness of experience
  • Opportunity to explore cultural interests
  • Opportunity to co-develop learning experiences with educator, student, mentor, partner

Resources/Facilities

  • Network connections
    • mentors
    • community resources
    • business/industry partners
    • Alumni
  • Career information
  • K-12 educators within Museums
  • Offices of community engagement within higher-ed
  • Models of successful programs
    • MKE Roots
  • Labs/equipment not available in K-12 schools

Structure/Process

  • Opportunities to connect to community and employment
  • Best practices:
    • Self reflection
    • use of artifacts as evidence of learning
    • intake models to assess knowledge and skills
    • assessment models
  • Dual Enrollment
  • MPS Learning Journeys program
  • Service learning programs/requirements
  • Credential stacking
  • Internships
  • Diversity funds
  • Centers to connect college students with businesses
    • MIAD Innovation Center
    • UWM Center for Student Experience & Talent
    • MSOE Create Institute

As participants talked through this point, they also made note of what they would like to see put in place to support experiential learning, including:

  • Having a passionate advocate or champion for a project in the community that can draw the attention and support of those who might create experiential learning opportunities to further the work.
  • Look for ways to get employers involved, build relationships that that can lead to internship and employment opportunities.
  • Look for what is in place already that can be brought to K-12
  • Take time to find where the gaps are and work to address them
  • Make the work intentional– ask those you are working for what they want and need
  • Create opportunities within these experiences to learn bout careers
  • Build and extend relationships
  • Localization of education/jobs & pathways

What gets in the way

While the capabilities and possibilities are many, there are always barriers. 

Discovery

The ability to:

  • find the right partners, where collaboration is mutually beneficial and builds value for both sides
  • see the value in partnership with K-12, particularly for industry partners
  • be aware of possibilities

Friction

  • Fatigue on teachers, companies, nonprofits to take on new work or engage for the duration
  • Staff turnover
  • Time required for planning vs doing
  • Culture of institutions to deal with disruptive rather than incremental change
  • Training required for partners and mentors
  • Development level of students matched to opportunity for growth
    • social emotional skills
    • soft skills
  • Pressures for academic success
  • Institutional gatekeeping of knowledge and relationships
  • Transportation for students
  • Misalignment of academic calendars
  • Misalignment of K-12 hours with availability of college students
  • Lack of training for community partners to collaborate effectively with students
  • Process and paperwork
    • background checks
  • Focus on test results/scores/metrics
  • Long time horizons and relationships needed to make progress
  • Demographic/generational chasms

Roadblocks

  • Priorities of institution or district
  • Schools’ idea of their role and work, and the role of the educator limits ideas and new approaches
  • Structure of school system for faculty to build relationships with the community/time to engage higher-ed, companies, local business.
  • Lack of capacity
    • staff,
    • time,
    • money
  • Lack of courage to try/mind set & culture
  • Lack of systems for K-12/Higher-ed collaboration within smaller firms/organizations 
  • Ability to get management buy-in
  • Misalignment of investment in capital rather than talent pipeline
  • Curriculum does not allow space
  • Budget constraints/pressures
  • Inflexible structures
  • Both levels are under attack in terms of
    • money
    • content
    • freedoms
    • how to deal with AI
  • Lack of trust
  • Inadequate infrastructure to support collaboration with minimal friction
  • Institutional rigidity/inability to adapt to change

 

Opportunities

Never wanting to end on a note of despair, we wrapped up the discussion by asking each table to pick a single issue and offer a suggestion for how it might be addressed. Bonus points for identifying an action someone could take this week to get things moving.

Group 1

Issue: Getting the opportunity just to explore and and experience

Change needed: Stepping of of the rigidity to embrace things that are invaluable, but de-valued

Goals: Let students just be and explore without concern that there is a specific standard to be met

Who needs to be involved: Sandra @ Greenfield has the freedom and transportation to get a group of students off campus; Students have a portfolio project to do as a graduation requirement; Marisa Riepenhoff from the Milwaukee Art Museum can offer a MAM behind the scenes program for Sandra’s students

Where to start: An email to set it up! [5 bonus points awarded]

Group 2

Issue: Within K-12, a lack of curiosity (play, passion, exploration) that links to career (purpose, exploration, thrivable way,  stacked credentials, mentorship)

Change needed: Fun & engaging educators, identify opportunities for play within industry, classroom is everywhere, instructor is everyone teachers are evaluated on the hope & joy youth/students experience not just standardized testing.

Goals: Get everyone on the same page  with a mission purpose, culture to increase hope and joy

Who needs to be involved: classroom and community, industry (professionals & mentors); youth decision making & expression; evaluators, practitioners, administrators

Where to start: Case study: Strengthen relationship between  classroom & community; inject curiosity into early education, insert purpose & joy within shadowing, apprenticeships, hands on learning. 

Group 3

Issue: Transportation for entry points– students & corporate partners.

Change needed: Bring the outside in– for the right age group

Goals: Authentic experiences

Who needs to be involved: Mentors, students, corporate partners

Where to start: Virtual options/ride sharing

Group 4

Issue: The system itself

Change needed: break the tradition

Goals: Stronger collaboration

Who needs to be involved: A risk taker/change agent

Where to start: Show up and Follow up!

Group 5

Issue: How to educate the community on the value of project based learning

Change needed: Greater appreciation for the value of project based learning

Goal: Hit enrollment target for Action Research Charter School

Who needs to be involved:  Respected voices who can speak to the value of PBL: business community, higher ed, PBL alum

Where to start: Reach out to the school/alum

Thanks

A big thanks to the MSOE STEM Center for hosting us, and to all of our featured participants:

Natalie Villegas — Director, MSOE’s CREATE Institute
Kelsey Otero — Sr. Director of Community Engagement, Marquette University
Kristin Steinbach Holtz — Experiential Learning Manager, MIAD
Josephine Gómez — Dean of Community Education & Strategic Engagement, MATC
Ben Trager — Director of Community Engagement and Experiential Learning, UWM’s Center for Student Experience & Talent

Collab Lab 71: Recap & Notes

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Our November Collab Lab explored how TRUE Skool‘s work to to envision and develop a new campus for their programs could be leveraged as an opportunity to engage youth throughout the process and help them build the skills, and relationships useful to pursue careers in architecture, construction, real estate and related professions.  

Some Background

The idea for the Collab Lab was the result of several threads coming together. TRUE Skool has been thinking about new space for their programs, that would get them out of lower level space within The Avenue. While TRUE Skool wants to remain downtown, a location broadly seen as accessible to all in an otherwise highly segregated city, it also wants greater visibility for their programming and the work their students do.

In 2023, Wisconsin Chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (Wisco NOMA) launched it’s first Project Pipeline Camp — a 3 day design workshop for middle and high school students interested in architecture. The work students did there focused on space planning for TRUE Skool. Wisco NOMA has run Project Pipelines Camps each summer since then, expanding to offer camps in Madison and Milwaukee for each of the last two years, always with the participation of a number of students from TRUE Skool.

In parallel, TRUE Skool as continued working with its students to explore what a new campus might look like. This spring, with support from Community Design Solutions (CDS), TRUE Skool students participated in a design challenge to envision what spaces within a new campus might offer.

Conversations over the summer with Wisco NOMA and TRUE Skool highlighted how aligned goals could build to a much larger opportunity. Wisco NOMA has wanted to connect students participating in it’s camps to further opportunities during the school year. TRUE Skool wants to see students engaged as active participants in realizing it’s vision of a new campus.  Those conversations led to the idea of Future Builders– putting together a network of individuals, organizations, and programs that engage youth in architecture, construction, real estate, and related professions, that could use TRUE Skool’s vision for a new campus as an opportunity for collaboration, that could offer students a connected series of opportunities over an extended period of time.

The first effort on this front was the Future Builders Studio, a weekend design camp earlier this month, focused on a new campus for TRUE Skool, in collaboration with Wisco NOMA, leveraging practices and curriculum developed with CDS, and Project Pipeline.

It’s a lot of threads coming together, but its simpler to think of it as aligned efforts operating at three different levels:

  • The What: A Future TRUE Skool Campus — TRUE Skool’s new, permanent home
  • The How: TRUE Skool Legacy Project — An overarching, youth-engaged effort to envision, design, and realize TRUE Skool’s future and document its story.
  • The Who: Future Builders Network — Individuals and organizations ready with expertise, programing, or resources to engage young people in real world projects that prepare them for careers in the building professions.

Our discussion focused on the how and the who.

Discussion

We began the discussion with a brainstorming exercise to identify existing programs and resources that touch some aspect of what TRUE Skool might need to take on between conceptual design and opening a new campus.  It’s a long list:

Understanding the ecosystem
Exploration of potential operating models
Existing spaces/organizations that could serve as models/inspiration
Data Resources
  • City of Milwaukee Property Data
  • Data You Can Use
Architecture & design
  • UWM Community Design Solutions
  • MATC’s Architecture Program
  • MIAD
Real estate & local economic development
  • Marquette’s Real Estate Program
  • Downtown Bid
  • ACREs program
  • Northwest Side CDC
  • LISC
  • CARW
  • WCREW
  • NAIOP
  • Mandel Group
Construction
  • ACE Mentorship
  • AGC
Resources in higher education
  • UWM Center for Student Experience & Talent
    • Experiential Learning
    • Service Learning
  • Marquette Trinity Fellows
Youth Engagement
  • City on the Hill
  • Milwaukee Youth Council
  • Journey House
  • Boys & Girls Clubs
Mentoring
  • HPGM
  • Mentor Milwaukee
Potential Funders
  • Northwestern Mutual
  • Zilber
  • Bader
  • Baird 
  • Milwaukee Tool
  • Potawatomi
  • Generac
  • Alliant Energy
  • We Energies
  • Harley Davidson Foundation

Key Opportunities

From here we moved on to explore the roles partners might play and areas that will be key to advancing the project. As each discussion group shared their thoughts, three things stood out:

  • In order to engage students from conceptual design through construction, TRUE Skool needs a plausible model for how a new campus would be funded.
  • Regardless of the funding model, TRUE Skool would benefit from greater visibility of both its offerings and approach.
  • There are other organizations and facilities within and beyond Milwaukee that could inform the design of spaces within a new campus, potential synergies with other partners who might share space or facilities with True Skool, and/or potential funding models to support development of a new campus.
Operating Model

While TRUE Skool has a strong vision for what they would like a new campus to offer and represent within the community, pulling together funding to lease, acquire and build out that space will require a plausible operating model for that new space. It is the understanding that the project could come to fruition that allows students to see that they are working on something real. It also provides a greater incentive for those who could support or engage students in aspects of this effort– it allows the work they might do with young people to be cast as supporting something much bigger.

Visibility

TRUE Skool and its students have been doing some really interesting work in Milwaukee over the past 10 years. Yet even among the people who came for the discussion, many were unfamiliar with everything TRUE Skool has been involved with and how they approach working with young people. TRUE Skool’s desire to get out of the lower level of The Avenue and into a more visible location is, in part, a recognition of this. A key point of discussion was how TRUE Skool might leverage work on the legacy project as a way to increase visibility of their work:

  • Social media takeover
  • Popup design workshops or other programs
  • Leveraging work with project partners to build exposure through their networks
  • Brining programming into schools
  • Prototyping ideas within existing spaces — schools, partner organizations, vacant storefronts
Models

Participants called out a number of spaces and organizations within and beyond Milwaukee that might serve as models for what a new campus might offer, how the spaces within it might be designed, or how TRUE Skool might pull together funding for the project.  Exploring those models and understanding what aspects of those could be useful for TRUE Skool offers yet another opportunity to engage students in the effort, and connect those students to more points within their community as well as to folks doing interesting work beyond it.

Next Steps

TRUE Skool will be reaching out to Collab Lab participants and other organizations to further explore how to advance the project. Our spring Collab Labs will be the focus of ad Education Policy course at UWM on Community Engagement. As the major assignment of that course, students will plan, produce, and run our May Collab Lab, which will dig a bit deeper into how and where partners and schools can come together to further advance the TRUE Skool Legacy Project.

Thanks

A big thanks to Shalina Ali from TRUE Skool,  Michael Sykes from WiscoNOMA, and Ross Younger from BUILTECH, and Danya Almoghrabi from UMW’s Community Design Solutions for working with us to pull the session together and facilitate the conversation, and all those who helped pull in friends and colleagues to join the conversation. Thanks also to the MSOE’s STEM Center our host for another season of Collab Labs.

If you want to get more of sense of TRUE Skool, the work they do and their current facility, visit their website, or take a look at the virtual tour TRUE Skool students captured with some help from Ross Younger.

 

Collab Lab 70: Recap & Notes

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Our tenth season of Collab Labs kicked off last week with a session co-hosted with Adriana Vázquez, Director of Education & Public Programs, and Maisie Buntin, Outreach Programs Coordinator for the Milwaukee Public Museum. Every year, the Milwaukee Public Museum hosts its annual BioBlitz, a 24-hour event where scientists survey the biodiversity in a park or natural area. Our session focused on a nagging issue for Adriana and Maisie– BioBlitzes don’t happen during the school year, so the museum misses opportunities to engage school audiences.

The Museum is working to adapt this big event into smaller, student-driven “mini-BioBlitzes” to be held at schoolyards, community organizations, and more. The Collab Lab provided an opportunity to explore that idea with educators and potential collaborators.

Discussion

Our conversation covered how attendees currently engage with students or community on biodiversity or other environmental topics, and what is missing from that engagement, how MPM mini BioBlitzes might play a role in addressing those gaps, and what’s needed to make that work. 

Over the course of the evening, several broad themes emerged.

The need to build hands-on, real-world learning into school culture

  • Getting students excited and connected to the content can be a challenge:
    • Students need to see illustrate real-word relevance to lessons
    • When schools have even just one teacher or admin motivated to provide these hands-on, real-world experiences, students show more interest and excitement
    • Giving students the opportunity to work on something real, present their work and ideas to an authentic audience are key motivators, environmental justice and civic engagement– focus on a local park or site, are useful entry points, particularly for those that aren’t (yet?) “Nature Nerds”
  • How can we do better to “operationalize” this type of learning – turn it from one person’s project into school culture and expectations?
    • Make it easy for teachers to take on the work:
      • cover their time to participate in training
      • provide funding and resources to implement effectively
      • explicitly tie to standards
      • engage community resources to support efforts within K-12
      • empower older students to support the work of younger peers
      • start with the easiest entry points for teachers and build out from there
    • Scaffolding – build capabilities to participate across grade levels. As examples, for mini-BioBlitz, kindergarteners do a color walk, elementary might look at various stages of categorization (ex. # insects, # plants, # of birds, etc.), up to high school (working with dichotomous keys, doing biodiversity index, etc.)
    • Biodiversity education is largely missing from afterschool/out of school programming. Teens Grow Greens offers a model for how that can be done.

Data collection and interpretation is a possible unexplored avenue of BioBlitz engagement

  • Using data from mini-BioBlitzes, at different locations, or from MPM full BioBlitz,
  • Potential alignment with AP exam topics re: data collection and analysis
  • Incorporation of GIS provides could provide additional entry points for exploration
  • Tap expertise  who may know of similar projects in other parts of the country
  • Curate and interpret data as an asset within the school

Integrating technology into this work

  • Identify apps/tools like iNaturalist that schools might leverage
  • Opportunities for students to create digital tools
  • As focal point for conversations around AI and how teachers are being asked to incorporate teaching about it – this could be an avenue to illustrate appropriate use of AI (ie. for species recognition)

Going beyond science

  • Tie in the arts (conveniently, the theme for our March Collab Lab)
  • Representation/social justice/environmental justice, e.g. how is biodiversity/access to biodiverse habitats correlated with socio-economic status?
  • Connect to student identity and background

What’s Next

We’ll have a chance to explore these topics further in our December and April Collab Labs with The Society for Conservation Biology North America (SCBNA), whose 2026 conference will be in Milwaukee. SCBNA has some upcoming webinars exploring the value of scientific assessments  to communities and policy makers. You can find the schedule and registration information here.

In November we will take on another project in the works, to explore how TRUE Skool‘s planning for a new campus might serve as through line to connect K-12 students to programming, expertise, and experiences over the course of that effort– from planning and design, through site acquisition and construction.

Thanks

A big thanks to Adriana and Maisie for working with us to pull the session together and facilitate the conversation. Thanks also the MSOE’s STEM Center our host for another season of Collab Labs.

Thanks also to Leah Rosenbaum from STEAM Milwaukee  who was able to join us for the session. She notes that STEAM Milwaukee has a number of resources  in their lending library for teachers who want to dive deeper into environmental explorations. These include sampling nets (not pictured on the website) as well as 8 microscopes and a set of Vernier probes.  Leah also mentioned Dear Data, as offering examples of both the simple ways data can be shared (via hand drawn annotated diagrams on postcards) and the range of ways data might be presented to illuminate an area of focus.

Collab Labs Return for Season 10

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs

When we started Learn Deep 10 years ago, we recognized the need to get those with a vision for what education in Milwaukee could look like in the same room– K-12 educators, those working in industry, higher-ed, nonprofits, or government. Not just to flesh out that vision, but to build the relationships that are central to brining that vision to life. Collab Labs give participants a chance to connect across silos, find others who share their passion, and where discover where goals can align to support much richer opportunities for both students and teachers.

Our 10th season of Collab Labs begins on Thursday October 9th with #70: Schoolyards as Science Labs, with Adriana Vázquez and Maisie Buntin from the Milwaukee Public Museum as our cohosts. For the 2025-26 season will be back at MSOE’s STEM Center, our home over the past four years. We look forward to another year of lively discussion, new and deepened connections, and the possibilities that arise when inspired educators are able to collaborate with the peers and partners to take on something big.

 

Our group from Collab Lab 30 in November 2019. Together, participants sketched out 14 ideas for engaging students on projects connected with green infrastructure.



Collab Lab 67: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs

Last week’s Collab Lab served as a follow on from our November’s session on Place Based Engagement. At that session and in follow up conversations, Joe Kaltenberg, MKE Parks Manager with the The City of Milwaukee noted that input from students, residents, property owners, and other stakeholders can offer the department not only a clearer picture of the roles the playgrounds and parks oversee play in those neighborhoods, but also a richer vision of the roles they could play. 

That prompted us to use Collab Lab 67 to explore how and where K-12 students might engage at different points in the City’s playground redevelopment process as a means to foster community input and engagement in those efforts. During the discussion participants identified three areas where engaging K-12 students could offer a rich experience for students and support key areas of the City’s process — stakeholder mapping, storytelling, and design.

Stakeholder Mapping

Stakeholder mapping allows the City to understand who uses, cares for, or is concerned with a particular playground or park, and who ought to have input or otherwise be involved as part of the redevelopment process. The work to identify stakeholders, their relation to a playground or park, the issues they see and the goals they have, is an opportunity for K-12 students to gain a much broader perspective on civic engagement. It’s a chance to understand who in a community cares about what happens on a specific site, the reasons behind that and where they may conflict and align with goals others may have.

Storytelling

For a park or playground to be of the neighborhood in which it sits, the City needs to hear the stories of those who use, care, or are impacted by a park or playground, and what takes place there. Storytelling offers methods to understand where stakeholders are coming from and communicate those hopes, fears, and dreams to a broader audience.

Collab Lab participants noted that a storytelling event focused at or on a particular site would allow K-12 students to collect stories from a variety of stakeholders. It would also serve as a way to draw attention to that site as a candidate for redevelopment.

Ideation

Involving students in the design of a playground or park, where they can see their ideas take shape and have an impact on the community is a wonderful idea. Yet, as Collab Lab participants noted, unless the process were constrained to proposals for the arrangement of pre-selected components, it is unlikely that they would ever see their designs implemented as envisioned, and even in this scenario, be able to recognize their contributions to what was put in place.

More importantly, this approach fails to leverage the fact that these are students. We shouldn’t be asking them to act as engineers, we should be asking them to dream, to think outside the box, and challenge the assumptions of engineers. Here the request of students ought to focus on how they or others experience a playground or the features or equipment under consideration. We ought to be asking them what adults involved in the process fail to see or understand about how a park or playground is experienced by those who use it. We need to probe behind suggestions for features that would never be implemented to understand the problem a student sees that an impossible feature solves.

Constraints

A common set of constraints cuts across all three of these areas for engagement. Central among them is the ability of teachers to effectively engage their students in this work:

  • Finding the time to do so
  • Establishing connections to curriculum standards
  • Synchronizing school calendars with the City’s, particularly when the seasons and weather can further constrain the time students can spend on-site
  • The availability of community partners to support student efforts
  • The ability of teachers to collaborate across classroom or school boundaries for shared success
  • The proximity of parks in the City’s pipeline to teachers and students ready to take on this work

The Collab Lab did not provide an opportunity to dive into all of these issues, but we were able to identify a strategy in one area. Most schools, particularly at the middle and high school level draw students from well beyond the neighborhood in which the school sits. Thus, while a park or playground may be near a school, many students will have limited exposure to it or be able to access it outside of school hours. For any of the opportunities noted above, this limits the ability to rely on students themselves as stakeholders, storytellers, or users of their own designs.

What we can do is ask students to work at a higher level, to be the mappers of stakeholders, the collectors of stories. We can ask them to be the designers who can communicate what the users of a park or playground that is near their school want from it or hope that it could become.

Where do we go from here

The work to organize teachers, students, and community stakeholders to participate in the planning process would be a lot for MKE Parks to take on. While useful to have that input, it’s not really something for them to take on. We’re exploring with Joe a different approach– developing a framework that, recognizing the timelines and constraints faced by each of these participants, allows them to work outside of a City managed process while offering their input and results of their work at the most useful points in the process.  We plan to spend time between now and the end of the school year to understand what this framework would need to look like to make this work for educators. If you are interested in participating in that process, let us know.

Collab Lab 66: Recap & Notes

Pete Reynolds Blog, Collab Labs

Our discussion at February’s Collab Lab focused on engaging families. As we explored goals we have for family engagement we considered:

  • Who we include as “family” in “family engagement”
  • Who family engages with
  • Where/When it happens
  • Who benefits/how

While parents, siblings, and caregivers of students are obvious starting points for who to include as family, the discussion quickly broadened to include a much broader group. The extended families of students, individuals and families in the community which surrounds a school, those who may work or own businesses in the community around the school. In no small part, this expansive view family reflects a deeper goal — that the school is not simply a place where students and teachers spend the day, but that it is deeply embedded in the life of the community.

This broader approach to engagement changes the way one thinks about who the school and it’s families engage with. It’s not just about caregivers connecting with their student’s teachers. It’s about giving those families a chance to connect with each other, individuals and organizations who support their school, and in particular. It looks to move past one way communication, simple reporting out of what a school thinks families ought to know. It looks to build the relationships and trust that allow disengaged families to engage and for the community to come together not just to support the work of students and their families, but to  support each other. It changes as well, where engagement might take place.  It moves beyond family coming to school. It’s the school coming out into the community. 

This expansive view of engagement only works if all participants see benefits, and they see that their contributions to the school community, as students, teachers, family members or neighbors are valued. 

What do members of the school community need to engage?

As we moved the discussion to what’s needed to engage, the word “dignity” came up early. Again, not just dignity for caregivers, but dignity for students, teachers, and members of the broader community who schools do or seek to engage with.  For caregivers, this means recognizing both the time, financial, and other constraints and obligations they work face, but that they have something to of value to offer, that they are partners in the education of their child.  Often it comes down to the simple things– if we are asking for something more of any of the participants, what burdens can we remove?

  • A time that works for those we want to engage with
  • Providing food at events that may overlap with meal times
  • Helping with transportation
  • Activities for children that may need to come when a caregiver is there for an adult conversation

Most importantly, don’t waste someone’s time.  This means not asking teachers, caregivers, or members of the broader community to participate in engagement activities they don’t value or benefit from. 

The process starts with how we invite the engagement. Are we asking for engagement because we see a caregiver or a student as a problem or the one that needs to solve it, or are we asking for engagement to work together for a better outcome.

In the end, it comes down to recognizing that members of the broadly defined school community each come with a different set of goals. Effective engagement doesn’t mean that everyone needs to share the same set of goals. It requires that we acknowledge the goals they do have, understand where they align, and find something useful to work on together that allows everyone to come out ahead. It’s how trust is built.

A special thanks to our featured guests,

Amber DuChateau — Art Teacher at the Milwaukee Academy of Science

Aubrey (Ellickson) Fulsaas — Environmental Educator, Schlitz Audubon Nature Center

Bernie Traversari — Director of Operations and Programs, Society for Conservation Biology North America & STEM Education Consultant

Additional thanks to Bernie for his help facilitating the session. Bernie joined us to record a debrief of the session that you can find on inspirEd.

As always, we’re appreciative of MSOE for letting us make use of the NM Lab in the WE Energies STEM Center every month.

Up Next

Collab Lab 67: Connecting to Community Thursday March 13th, 5:30 to 8:30 pm at MSOE’s STEM Center

Actively using some form of PBL with your students and looking for ideas or encouragement from others? Consider joining your peers in the inspirED Community.

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