McKenna Institute's TeXplore Turns 17 Days Off School Into Soldering, Robots and AI

At the Dieppe Public Library, on a day their school was closed, a group of students learned to hold a soldering iron. What they assembled — adaptive switches and toys for children with disabilities — went to the Stan Cassidy Centre for Rehabilitation and the IWK Health Centre.

That was one of 17 such days. UNB's McKenna Institute has now published results from the pilot of TeXplore, a province-wide program that fills non-instructional days — the ones that hand New Brunswick families no classes and no plan — with hands-on digital learning.

The pilot ran from December 2025 to May 2026 and reached more than 150 students in districts and communities across the province, in person and virtually, in both official languages. More than 40 delivery partners in New Brunswick and across the country ran the sessions.

The students picked the syllabus

The design process is the unusual part. Rather than assembling a curriculum and marketing it, the institute asked its audience first. At community events through the school year, students voted on the subject areas they actually wanted: AI and computers, art and making, nature and outdoor exploration, game design, entrepreneurship.

Parents and caregivers got a survey about the things that decide whether a program is usable at all — preferred topics, scheduling, transportation, the grade levels in each family. That feedback shaped the programming, the partnerships and the delivery model.

"TeXplore was built through collaboration, because preparing students for the future cannot happen in isolation," said Abby David, strategic program director at the McKenna Institute.

The turnout, the institute says, confirmed the original premise: there is real demand for accessible enrichment on the days when students have nowhere to be.

Soldering in Dieppe, Minecraft in District West

The sessions themselves are more concrete than most digital-skills programming.

The Dieppe workshop paired participants with mentors from Place aux compétences and the Neil Squire Society for soldering, circuit testing and hardware assembly. Students learned to use a soldering iron and finished the day with working assistive devices for children who need them.

Middle-school students from Anglophone School District West spent theirs using Minecraft Education and AI tools to design solutions to community problems, then pitched them in a live team competition led by a national expert from Dell Technologies.

Younger children got a gentler on-ramp. Promise Partnership brought elementary students and their caregivers together to build dream schools and animal shelters out of Lego Duplo and magnetic tiles, then moved them on to introductory coding with Sphero Mini robots. Older students programmed obstacle courses along a corridor, iterating on their designs as they raced. Other sessions put students in front of a green screen to produce their own videos.

The reviews were appropriately unpretentious. "I didn't know it was going to be this much fun!" one student said.

One parent had signed up a daughter who was not enthusiastic about the idea. "But she ended up loving it. Since then, she has been asking if there will be more opportunities, especially ones focused on technology and computers." The alternative, the parent noted, was a teenager home alone with a list of chores: "It was a win-win."

Those days exist in the first place because teachers are in training. The province's education department, which runs that side of the calendar, is on side with filling the student side of it. "When educators have access to relevant and ongoing professional learning, they are better equipped to meet the needs of all learners," said Dr. Tiffany Bastin, assistant deputy minister for educational services at the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development. "We sincerely appreciate the McKenna Institute's leadership in creating opportunities that enrich learning beyond the classroom."

A talent pipeline measured in decades

TeXplore was announced in September 2025, funded by a $500,000 gift from an anonymous donor, with a stated emphasis on reaching rural and remote learners. It will expand in the coming school year with more partners and activities, guided by an advisory committee drawn from Anglophone, Francophone and First Nations communities, and the institute is building an online calendar so families can see what is available on upcoming non-instructional days.

This is the same long game the institute has been playing since Frank McKenna's founding gift in 2021 — and it sits alongside UNB's broader move to consolidate its startup machinery into one network. None of it shows up in a funding round this quarter. It shows up in whether the province's cybersecurity cluster and its agtech and health-tech companies can hire locally in fifteen years.

A hundred and fifty students across 17 days is a pilot, not a transformation. But the ambition is legible in the details: a day off school in Dieppe that ended with a box of assistive toys headed for a rehabilitation hospital.

Sources

• The McKenna Institute is inspiring the next generation of innovators through TeXplore program — UNB Newsroom, August 4, 2026: pilot results (17 events, 150+ students, 40+ partners), Abby David and Dr. Tiffany Bastin quotes, session descriptions, parent and student comments, expansion plans
• UNB's McKenna Institute announces innovative learning program for K-12 students and communities — UNB Newsroom, September 2025: launch, $500,000 anonymous gift, subject areas, rural and remote access emphasis
• The McKenna Institute — institute mandate and programming