by Susan Bitetti, Education Specialist
This past November/early December, Tufts CEEO hosted Billund Builds workshop, a week long study tour for 36 educators and administrators from Billund, Denmark in collaboration with the Capital of Children. The CEEO faced an exciting challenge of addressing the needs and challenges of not just educators but also those of administrators and principals from pre-school through middle school. Our visitors from Billund were thinking beyond just the preparation and training for their school district’s third annual “Billund Builds Nature” week; they were eager to explore ways of cultivating and sustaining a culture of making and meaningful play within their education system in the long term. Billund Builds is a week-long event in the town of Billund where all schools pause their usual lessons and engage in hands-on design activities around a particular theme (previous years being “music” and “energy”). Despite the excitement around making generated during the Billund Builds week, there remains a question as to how to best sustain the mindset and integrate more hands-on, project-based learning when students return to their traditional subjects.
In hopes of addressing the wide variety of questions and topics, we were fortunate enough to leverage our own internal Tufts resources as well as local educators and education policy-makers. To start the week, participants had interesting discussions around their goals and challenges, with inspiring talks from Professor Ethan Danahy and Professor Chris Rogers. Everyone partook in Novel Engineering Challenges on Day One as well. This activity put all the participants back in the shoes of a student and led to some wonderful reflections on the opportunities as well as potential difficulties of such open-ended design tasks.
The Billund Builds educators were especially thankful to the local schools and daycares that opened their doors and shared their first-hand experiences in implementing hands-on learning. Additional guests during the week included Bill Church and Jeremy Knowlton of White Mountain Science in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, Anne Worrall of High Tech High in San Diego, California, Jake Foster of WGBH, and David Benedetto of the New Hampshire Department of Education.
*A special thanks to all of the educators and schools that participated in Billund Builds week, especially Lesley STEAM Learning Lab, Eliot Pearson School at Tufts, Tufts Bray Labs, Winter Hill Innovation School, Shady Hill School, Lesley Ellis Elementary, and Bright Horizons Day Care.
