SEPTEMBER 2025
In this newsletter...
Kits and Carts – Cool tools for teaching repair in the classroom and at home
What happens when maker classrooms lean into teaching repair
How learning to repair can happen through play
Repair Everywhere! Makerspace, Climate Literacy, and Science class all are entry points for repair
Berkeley Unified School District 2025 Climate Fair, California USA – Credit Vita Wells
Taking Repair into the Classroom
The essays and resources featured here highlight inspiring and ready-to-use approaches that make repair an engaging and powerful part of any learning environment. While repair isn’t yet a standard in most schools, we hope these stories spark ideas for weaving it into the learning spaces you create.
Notes from the Field is a series of essays from educators and repair advocates who put repair at the heart of their teaching and organizing.
These accounts offer insights into teaching repair in real-world contexts – from classrooms and makerspaces to libraries, community centers, and other educational settings.
Kimberley Schroder, Empowering Students through Hands-On Lamp Repair
Kimberley’s workshops demonstrate how repair brings critical thinking, real-world problem-solving, and basic physics concepts into the classroom, while also making space for urgent conversations like caring for the environment.
Zoe Athanasiou, Repair in the Classroom: Empowering the Next Generation of Fixers
Zoe explains the thinking behind Team Repair’s kits and how they work: Transform how children engage with science and technology through fixing real objects. Home kits include strategically broken gadgets, tools, parts and repair guides. Classroom kits also include teaching instructions, worksheets, lesson plans and more.
Jimmy Santosa, Burke’s School Third Graders Dive Into Repair
Inspired by Berkeley’s Fix-It Fest and our Educator Resource Library, Jimmy brought a repair unit to his third-grade makerspace. With parents and grandparents as repair coaches, students discovered the value of fixing things and how it supports a more sustainable world.
Megan Stasi and Debbie Hoffman, Fix It Carts – Bringing a Culture of Repair into Primary Schools
Megan and Debbie recount how their experience with the local Repair Café led them to establish a Repair Club, then to develop Fix It Carts to cultivate a repair mindset in their K - 8 schools.
Featured Resources!
Whether you’re looking for quick, low-cost DIY repair kits, or have a team of volunteers ready to invest in building your classroom a more comprehensive set-up, these examples show the range of possibilities for repair kits and carts.
A kit for teaching about lamp repair. Especially valuable for classrooms, easy to use, relatively inexpensive, includes two teaching slide decks. See Kimberley’s Note for inspiration!
Lesson plans and activity guides for K - 8: cart building plans and supply lists. Each cart is stocked with age-appropriate tools and materials.
Team Repair provides hands-on learning kits tied to science, tech, and sustainability education – great for both classrooms and home.
BUSD’s STEM / Maker Class Repair Unit *EXPANDED*
Curriculum, lesson plans, and slides for teaching a one-week repair unit in a middle school STEM/Maker class.
Have you used the Educator Resource Library?
Let us know! Your feedback helps us grow and shape the tools we share.
We invite you to suggest additions to the Library or to Notes from the Field.
Makerspace Educators!
We’re developing a new resource, an argument and pathway for maker-educators to bring repair into their classrooms. It will continue to be developed as we work with and hear from maker educators. Take a look at Re-Thinking Repair in Maker Education Programs to see how you might bring repair into your makerspace, and get in touch if you’d like to help develop and share-out this resource.
Save the date!
International Repair Day
Every October repair advocates around the world celebrate the power of repair to bring communities together, reduce our impact on the planet, teach new skills, and so much more. Whether you’re a fixer, community organiser, tinkerer, maker, repair business, campaigner or simply a fan of repair, there are lots of ways to join in.