February 2026
In this newsletter...
BUSD's Spring Community Fix-it Fest on February 28th
Berkeley is a MODEL for bringing repair into schools
Hear from educators and students!
Check out what they're doing and the resources they've created!
Repair & Share Virtual Summit: March 19-20 (Education sessions!)
Grant Application Reminder: Due March 2nd
Berkeley Unified School District’s Spring Community Repair Event
Saturday, February 28, 2026 from 1:00 - 3:30
Longfellow Middle School, 1701 San Pablo Ave, Berkeley, California
A Berkeley Unified School District Climate Literacy Initiative and Middle School MakerSpace event, in collaboration with Transition Berkeley, Nimble Repair, & The Culture of Repair Project. Bring your broken electronics, appliances, toys, bikes, clothes, small furniture and more to the Fix-it Fest. Learn a new skill and help reduce waste in our community. Thank you Patagonia San Franscisco for your support!
For Information, to Volunteer, or to Pre-Register an Item: Click Here
Understanding Berkeley's Model for
Bringing Repair into Schools:
Educators, Community Volunteers, and Students
Steven Rivera teaching the repair unit at Willard Middle School, Berkeley, California USA
Repair enriches teaching across subjects, addresses environmental issues straight-on, and offers schools opportunities to serve their communities.
Repair advocates materially advance their objectives through engaging with schools.
Recognizing that, Berkeley Unified School District (California, USA) has embraced repair and developed a robust, multifaceted program in which local repair advocates are deeply involved.
Berkeley offers a model for how a school system can engage with the global repair movement and locally expand a culture of repair. It's also a model for how, through working with schools, repair advocates can turbocharge their work in the community.
The BUSD approach is supported materially by four Berkeley-based organizations that center repair in their work: Transition Berkeley, Nimble Repair, The Culture of Repair Project, and Fixit Clinic. The High School Robotics Team and the Sustainable Fashion Club are involved, along with multiple school district departments -- information technology, buildings and grounds sustainability, and the Climate Literacy Initiative (curriculum). The City of Berkeley's Zero Waste and YouthWorks programs and Berkeley Public Schools Fund also participate.
This issue of the newsletter focuses on educators and students. Stay tuned for a future issue highlighting advocates' impactful work in educational settings.
We invite you check out the "Notes from the Field" and "Educator Resource Library" entries that follow for the what's, why's, how-to's, and inspiration:
MakerSpace/STEM teacher Debbie Lenz on bringing repair into her classroom
Middle School MakerSpace Repair Curriculum
High School Robotics Team leaps into repair
Fix-it Fest: a school district-hosted community repair event
Chromebook Rescue Program
District-wide Climate Literacy coordinator Ellen McClure champions repair
Notes from the Field is a series of essays and reports from educators and repair advocates who put repair at the heart of their teaching and organizing.
These accounts offer models for teaching repair in real-world contexts – from classrooms and makerspaces to libraries, community centers, and other educational settings.
Berkeley's middle-school STEM and MakerSpace teacher Debbie Lenz brought repair into the classroom. Learn about her vision, the details of the program, and how she implemented it.
Berkeley High School Robotics Team members are volunteer fixers at BUSD community repair events. Read about how Berkelium is a model for how other robotics teams can advance the global repair movement.
Ellen McClure, BUSD Climate Literacy Coordinator, writes about how repair relates to Climate Literacy.
Read about working with the district and community repair advocates to integrate repair into the middle-school STEM / MakerSpace program, and to launch Fix-it Fests.
BUSD’s technology and sustainability departments and the Climate Literacy Initiative are working with the Berkeley Public Schools Fund and Fixit Clinic to refurbish obsoleted Chromebooks for distribution to under-resourced students and families. The program trains students, addresses the digital divide, implements good stewardship of devices that might have gone to landfill, and introduces opportunities to teach about sustainability and e-waste.
Featured Berkeley Resource!
Berkeley Unified School District’s STEM / MakerSpace Class Repair Unit
*Updated! *
Curriculum, lesson plans, and slides for teaching a beginner one-week repair unit in a middle school STEM / MakerSpace class.
Educators + Advocates = Impact
Stay tuned for a future issue celebrating advocates making a difference.
Schools hosting community repair events, with the support of local repair advocates, catapults both educator and advocate objectives forward, far more than either could do on their own. Click HERE to read about synergies, benefits, what it looks like, and how-to.
When repair advocates support teachers’ in-class repair instruction, the objectives of both educators and advocates are advanced more than either could do on their own. Click HERE to read about synergies, benefits, tools, what it looks like, and how-to.
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.
Save the Date!
Repair & Share Summit:
Building the Care Economy
March 19-20
Join us at the Repair Economy Washington Repair & Share Summit: Building the Care Economy. We will attend and host sessions about repair education. See you there!
Grant Applications Due March 2, 2026
We support teachers and community advocates who are bringing repair into primary and secondary schools. Repair is more than a technical skill; it’s a mindset and a way of engaging with the world.