Educational leaders visit Butler high school
BUTLER TWP — Even school district superintendents have something to learn in the classroom.
Throughout this week, educational leaders from around the globe have been at Remake Learning’s Forge Futures conference in Pittsburgh, a national summit on community-wide learning. More than 200 school leaders, learning innovators and education policymakers from around the world came together at the summit to share collective goals and ideas for the future of public education.
On Wednesday, May 8, many of those leaders met at Butler Senior High School, where they learned about each of the school district’s elementary schools’ focus areas from each of their principals.
Brian White, superintendent of Butler Area School District, said the Butler district was invited by Remake Learning to host a visit, which presented an opportunity to network and showcase the unique properties of the school district.
“It gave us the opportunity to showcase what we have going on,” White said. “This is an incredible networking opportunity; there are a number of national organizations here. You start to build relationships with folks. They might say, ‘I’m doing something similar; we tried this, maybe you want to try.’”
Butler Senior High School’s library was filled with educators from across the U.S., and from nations like Australia, Peru, Bermuda and the United Kingdom. In addition to teachers and principals who were explaining their school’s methods to outsiders, students got involved as well and shared some of the lessons they are learning.
According to Gladys Cruz, president of the School Superintendents Association, getting educational leaders together each year to share best practices and experiences helps everyone get on the same page. Above all, the conferences and workshops educators take part in at the summit are to help children.
“It’s really about coming together, collaborating, learning together, partnering with other businesses, industries, to create the future of education that will meet the need of all of our students and help them find their passions, be successful and live a great life,” Cruz said.
“I’m a believer in collective wisdom, that the collective is greater than the individual — so whenever you bring different perspectives together, you can get some amazing creative ideas.”
Stephanie Lewis, director of relationships for Remake Learning, also said the activities educators would participate in over the course of the summit would help them come to common methods of teaching. Remake Learning includes more than 1,200 members working in education across 10 counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia, and Lewis said the network helps connect them all to one another.
“A lot of the activities today would be focusing on getting out to the actual field, see and hear and kind of build what’s working in schools around our region,” Lewis said. “Then tomorrow, they’ll have time to actually work together and kind of co-create and innovate — think of new ways to learn.”
In her short time in Butler on Wednesday, Cruz heard about several community organizations that aid Butler school district families. She mentioned the Butler Collaborative for Families, a community organization made up of nonprofit leaders from the area, as a particularly pivotal resource for education.
“We learned about Butler Collaborative for Families; I think that is a critical piece,” Cruz said. “We have to be working with our families. Our families are our children’s first educators, and we have to have partnerships so that we can make sure their kids are successful.”
Attendees of the conference Wednesday went on to visit Ehrman Crest Elementary School in the Seneca Valley School District, according to White. The Thursday schedule includes a visit the Carnegie Science Center.
Cruz had high hopes for the conference, saying that involving educators from other countries also adds to the collective education of the educators. That collaboration, she said, would help improve public education.
“Our systems are so complex; we need the perspectives of many,” Cruz said.
