About 200 University of Michigan students and community members gathered Friday afternoon in the Prechter Lab at the Marsal Family School of Education for the Spark Festival of Learning, an event aimed at inspiring curiosity in the field of education. The festival featured food and a variety of hands-on activities, including making shadow puppets with Music, Theatre & Dance professor Christianne Myers and a photo opportunity with Clifford the Big Red Dog from the Michigan Learning Channel. Visitors were encouraged to participate in workshops including toolmaking and a virtual reality experience of manoomin harvesting led by doctoral candidate Jared Ten Brink.
Natalie Davis, an assistant professor at the School of Education and a member of the steering committee for the Eileen Lappin Weiser Center for the Learning Sciences, said in her opening remarks the festival was organized to encourage attendee’s love for learning.
“I had the wild and maybe crazy idea of bringing people together to show some of the vastness and richness around what they know,” Davis said. “So in keeping with the center’s focus on learning as a lifelong human endeavor, one that can be transformative, communal and also nourishing things that I think we need in this time and in this moment — we wondered about whether we could curate an inclusive space and incite a spark for learning that encourages flourishing and connection.”
In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Heidi Bennett, the project manager for the Center, said the politicization of education made the festival’s celebration of learning even more important.
“I think education is getting sort of a bad rap right now and being maybe blamed for things,” Bennett said. “Everyone here has the intention to do things to make the world a better place. I think it’s like a nice reminder for all of us to kind of remember why we’re in the education field, and the joy and the happiness and the growth that can come from learning and education.”
The Leslie Science & Nature Center also was present at the festival and educated visitors on different types of animals, including a cockroach, fox snake and a tiger salamander that children could touch.
In an interview with The Daily, Ayden Moss, an educator at the nature center, said he hoped to change people’s negative perception of certain animals by educating the public.
“Animals get a really bad reputation when it comes to fighting and hurting individuals,” Moss said. “That’s because most people who try to handle animals aren’t trained on how to handle the animals. … We make sure that if someone’s allowed to interact with the animal, we tell them how to do it, how they can touch it, where they can touch it, and we make sure to answer any questions that anyone has about the animal.”
In addition to the educational aspects of the festival, Rackham student Jane Lloyd told The Daily she brought her son, Simon, to the event to enjoy the community.
“As a parent, it’s just such a gift to have events you can bring your kids to that are engaging and interesting,” Lloyd said. “Having it be something that’s not just for kids is an added bonus. So getting to bring him to campus where he can be in the buildings and do stuff that’s interesting and fun at his age but still be surrounded by young adults and just see all these different people and students, it’s really cool.”
Although this was the first time the festival was held, Bennett said the group is already looking toward the future and implementing changes for the next event.
“The large turnout was a really nice, pleasant surprise,” Bennett said. “We’re actually doing some evaluation ourselves. We’re asking attendees to take a survey, and we’re asking for feedback, and we’ll also ask the learning guides for their feedback, and try to take what we learn from what people tell us about what worked well, or what we could change, and make adjustments for the future.”
Daily Staff Reporter Kayla Lugo can be reached at klugo@umich.edu.
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