3 Trends Early Childhood Classroom Landscape

by Sandra Duncan, Jody Martin & Rebecca Kreth

There are over 11 million children under the age of five spending the majority of their preschool lifetime in some type of early childhood classroom. Most of these environments for young children look pretty much the same resembling each other with their traditional primary-colored equipment, area rugs bordered with cartoon figures, shapes and letters, brightly colored plastic toys, laminated posters of all sizes and shapes, and shelves stuffed and stacked high with learning materials. Even the room’s arrangement of the learning centers and furniture is similar. There is, indeed, a certain aesthetic code or a traditionally accepted notion of what an early childhood environment should be amongst teachers, college professors, parents, and producers of early childhood products. The result? Cookie cutter classrooms.    

Experts are beginning to break the traditional aesthetic codes of early childhood classrooms and examining classroom design with a new perspective. They are, for example, listening to the research of environmental scientists that clearly demonstrates a positive correlation between human productivity and space design. Armed with the contemporary thinking about pedagogy and space and the recent educational and environmental research on potential of positive places, educators are beginning to recognize the classroom environment as the third teacher. As a result, certain trends are starting to emerge: (1) linking the classroom to the local community; (2) providing authentic play spaces; and (3) naturalizing children’s spaces.

#1: Linking Classroom to Community  

Connecting the child’s outside world to the classroom is essential for them to feel connected, included, respected, accepted, and secure — all critical emotional needs.  Often, however, our definition of the outside world is much too broad when we include experiences such as flying to Japan in an airplane made of cardboard with children’s chairs for the jet’s seats or turn the classroom into an Amazon rain forest. It is far more meaningful to connect children to the amazing world immediately outside their classrooms’ windows or doors. It doesn’t matter if your classroom is located in a suburban, urban, or rural landscape, place-based adventures abound anywhere you reside.

Placed-based education is the process of using the local community and environment as a starting point for teaching academic and social-emotional concepts to young children. Because place-based education emphasizes hands-on, real-world learning experiences in the immediate area, this educational approach: (1) helps students develop stronger ties to their community; (2) enhances children’s appreciation for the natural world; and (3) creates a heightened commitment to becoming active and contributing citizens.

One strategy for place-based education is through traditional arts. Most of the time, traditional arts are passed down or learned from someone that shares ethnic heritage or family background and passed down from generation to generation. Often, these traditional arts can be learned from someone in the neighborhood who is willing to share their talents and skills. Offering children opportunities to engage in traditional arts activities such as basket making, weaving, flower pressing, wood carving, folk dancing, knitting, instrument making, painting, sculpting, storytelling and other forms of traditional arts helps promote a sense of connection to their community. 

Nugget of Thought:  Look close by before you look worldwide

#2: Providing Authentic Play Spaces

Most classrooms include the basic equipment, furniture, and learning materials required for licensing and accreditation. However, many of these items are not authentic and do not represent or reflect children’s real life experiences. Because authentic (or real) items are familiar, they are meaningful to children. When children are offered meaningful experiences through authentic learning materials and objects, their conversations, social interactions, and cognition increase. Examples of authentic objects include real pots and pans, metal colander, sterling silver tea pot, dish towels, pot holders, and wooden bread board. Framed images of real or natural elements such as flora, fauna, topography, animals, or people from the local community also enhance children’s play spaces with authenticity.

Nugget of Thought: Offer authentic over plastic—real over pretend.

#3: Naturalizing Children’s Spaces  

It seems like children spend less time outdoors than they used to even though research shows that children who interact with nature are happier, healthier, and do better in school. Fortunately nature is all around us. Whether it is playing in the mud, searching for shells in the sand, picking berries off a bush, or tending to a mini-garden on the playground, children learn from interacting with nature and natural elements. Too often, however, educators think of nature experiences being limited to the outdoors and do not consider the idea of bringing the outside in.

In addition to the common elements of the classroom such as tables, chairs, bookshelves, and equipment, natural items can be added to enrich the environment.  Examples of natural items include seashells, river rocks, tree bark, sea glass, pinecones, acorns, twigs, driftwood, buckeyes, tree cookies, sea grass, coral, and pine boughs — all gathered by the children from the local community. Including natural elements from outside the classroom door gives young children a connection to their neighborhood and a sense of belonging.

Nugget of Thought: Bring outside in.

Abandon the cookie cutter classroom notion of institutional environments and find other joyful expressions of unique furnishings and materials that can be added to change the landscape of the early childhood classroom. Connect to local community, offer authentic play spaces, and naturalize children’s environments.

Sandra Duncan, EdD, has over 45 years’ experience in the early care and education field. A past owner of early childhood programs, she now publishes curricula and teacher resources and trains teachers and program directors throughout the country. Jody Martin has 30 years’ experience at nearly every level of early education, a BA in psychology and minor in child development. She is now serving as vice president of education and training for Crème de la Crème. Rebecca Kreth has spent the last 25 years working with diverse communities, including supporting teaching practices for American Indian and Alaska native children. She has a BA in psychology and minor in child development.

Capturing The Spirit of Wonder in Schools

 

By Christian Long

I’ve been playing a single 1-min Internet video of little kids splashing in a puddle for most of the day. And I’m captivated. Dressed in bright colored full-body rain suits and rain boots, a gaggle of pre-school students wanders a gravel forest road until they encounter a giant rain puddle. Everything in their world stops. One child enters the puddle: exploring, laughing, running. Then another follows until all joyfully do so. They then circle back to do it again and again. To the viewer, it is a remarkable moment of splashing, laughing…and pure wonder-fueled discovery.

The viewer first asks the obvious: Where are they? Where are they going? Where are the teachers? What are they actually supposed to be doing? Then slowly, almost magically, one’s imagination becomes more curious, like the kids themselves: What are they making sense of? What are they feeling? What is this sparking in the the nearby adults? Where else do they get to explore without boundaries or adults guiding every choice? What are the long-term effects of ongoing playful discovery?

As viewers’ questions unfold while watching this video of ForestKids students in Nova Scotia, Canada, it becomes less about the ‘what’ and more about the ‘why’. And as a designer, this shift makes all the difference in the world.

Over the last 15 years of collaborating with a number of really passionate and talented school design / architecture teams, working with a wide array of schools with a variety of project needs and aspirations, I have seen a profound shift in how many are approaching the design process. While many of their questions still focus on easily measured / easily priced ‘objects’ – square footage, materials, furniture, 3D printers, etc. – more and more of our clients are starting the design process by asking a different set of questions entirely:

Ø  How will this process prepare our kids, teachers, and community for the ways they will teach, learn and collaborate in the future?

Ø  Beyond spaces, what else must we re-imagine and re-design?

Ø  Can the design process itself be the way our school creates and collaborates over time?

In other words, as important as the physical spaces are, there is a rising sense that ‘how’ we come together to design new learning environments may be the most valuable asset of all. And perhaps even more, the spirit of wonder and curiosity – more so than theory and certainty -- must be front and center at every design step along the way.

While I am extremely proud of the ‘end products’ my WONDER team creates with our partners, I am most inspired by the ‘messy process’ of discovery that has become central to everything. At our founding three years ago, our WONDER studio intentionally shifted away from the traditional A&E / business process of focusing on the ‘building’ as the end product.

In its place, we invested in a human-centered, multi-disciplinary design methodology committed to uncovering what people and communities ultimately ‘need’ so they can thrive as learners, collaborators and human systems. It has become less about efficiently guaranteeing predictable ‘projects’ that are spreadsheet-driven and more about ‘expeditions’ that uncover the unpredictable.

Like professional design studios IDEO and NoTosh, university programs like Stanford University’s d.school or MIT’s NuVu, or a rising number of K-12 schools like the Nueva School and Mt. Vernon, we have embraced a ‘Design Thinking’ process. Everything we do is anchored in ‘empathy’ via purposeful ethnographic methodologies and ‘prototypes’ via rapid development techniques to re-think and challenge all of our assumptions within every project.

In other words, we want to occupy a mindset of wonder and curiosity as long as possible. This means teaming up with film-makers, scientists, technology entrepreneurs, policy makers, and others that do not normally ‘design’ schools so that we can challenge every assumption we have.

This means not asking kids and teachers to be ‘school designers for a day’ via traditional workshops but instead teaming up with kids, teachers, and community partners to take on real-world design challenges beyond the project itself in order to make real community impact (and simultaneously observing ‘how’ teams instinctively use spaces, tools and each other in real time).

And it means getting involved in projects far beyond architecture to broaden our insights, whether it be organizing multi-school leadership retreats to explore the future of education, working with national foundations to create multi-year films, or leading long-term teacher professional development processes. Perhaps the process leads to a better building. Perhaps it leads to a decision not to build a building at all. Or perhaps it leads to re-imagining ‘school’ in ways never before imagined. 

Of all of these efforts that have had the biggest impact on how our clients engage the school design process – and on us as a design firm – the most striking are the year-long / multi-year-long teacher professional development design expeditions we regularly are asked to lead. Generally, there are three reasons why a school team makes such an investment:

·         1. They will renovate or build in the future, so they want to amplify their educators’ ability to solidify the non-negotiable cultural / behavioral characteristics that must underpin all future design choices.

·         2. They have already begun the architectural process and realize that educators must now collaboratively experiment and test new behaviors in order to fully leverage emerging spaces.

·         3. They realize that if they only design new spaces without re-thinking everything as a unified ecology – spaces, culture, brand, time, schedule, curriculum, technology, partnerships, professional practice, etc. – they will never fully realize the value of the architecture itself.

Structurally, we employ with the following elements:

Learning Design, Not School Architecture

As much as we want to eventually focus on the design of spaces, the focus of the teacher experience can’t be about solving that problem. Ideally, we can use it as a spring board, but it’s never the explicit focus of the overall experience. Instead we want to find the underlying questions worth exploring, whether it is agility, collaboration, professional identity, a maker culture, etc.

Design Thinking Methodologies

While we are very experienced with the traditional architectural process, we are equally experienced as educators. We intentionally use ‘Design Thinking’ methods so that teachers and educator teams can ‘hack’ everything we do and bring elements back into their own day-to-day practice. Also, we want a process that uncovers the unexpected, that approaches design challenges in oblique ways, and naturally requires unexpectedly multi-disciplinary teams that choose to be curious rather than certain.

Multi-Disciplinary Cohorts

While the team may be made up of educators from the school, they are never the teams that typically gather together. We do not start off with resumes or department lists to create the teams. Instead, the teachers are given a design challenge to respond to and team selections grow out of looking for a creative blending of backgrounds and yes-and attitudes.

Multi-Semester / Multi-Year Experiences

Each team agrees to work together for a minimum of one year, made up of two school semesters. This allows the first semester to be an ‘ethnographic’ process of empathy-driven discovery, both about themselves as professionals and the overall school itself. Similarly, it allows the second semester to be focused on making a positive impact on each member and the school itself. In an ideal world, the first cohort will be followed each semester by a new cohort. And over time, each cohort will take on some facilitation / mentoring of the future cohorts so that the process becomes embedded in the school culture itself.

Solo and Group Design Challenges

Together we end up exploring many things that arise along the way: childhood, peer collaboration, trans-disciplinary curriculum design, faculty lounge interactions, hacker and tinkerer mindsets, supporting parents, emergent professional practices, grading, plausible futures, artificial and virtual reality, storytelling, faculty meetings, social-entrepreneurism, creating cultures of curiosity and innovation, imagining entirely new school models, etc. Inspired by discoveries like these, each cohort member takes on a semester-long design project and the entire cohort takes on a group project as well, all of which has the dual goal of expanding individual practice and creating the conditions for the entire school to thrive. 

While such a shift away from the traditional architectural process has a profound impact on the eventual design of spaces and places, it has a larger impact on amplifying the non-negotiable values within a school community. It creates opportunity for people to truly ‘beta-test’ their future experiences.

As a designer, approaching ‘school architecture’ in this way is no small change. It is akin to shifting from asking a client practical questions – such as how much space and storage do they need in their classrooms and studios; what kind of furniture do they want in their new library or community spaces; and how many 3D printers they want to order for their new maker space? -- to engaging a more oblique line of design inquiry:

Or, looking out more into the future, it becomes less about what the building can and should look like, and more about asking a school community (and oneself) about their aspired behaviors and rituals: how can multi-generational collaboration take place equally both on and off campus; how can we test for and prototype an emerging culture of just-in-time creativity and curation in the ‘corners’ and ‘nodes’ of the school; what if only 20% of our future students come ‘to campus’ each day, while we simultaneously serve 1000% more students then we ever have in the past; what if we stop designing existing classrooms as studios in the traditional sense of ‘school’ but instead position our students and teachers as empathy-fueled change agents out in the community at large?

We live in a world education where everything is changing right in front of our eyes. No longer is it even understood what it will mean to ‘go to school’ in the future, nor what it will mean to ‘design a school’. As educators, distributors, manufacturers, school and community leaders, and designers of future learning environments, this means we are being challenged to adapt and shift on multiple fronts in order to serve our students and communities in ways we cannot possibly predict. To that end, this is a remarkable 'design challenge' to embrace, equally intimidating and extraordinary in nature.

And that brings me back to pondering rain puddles. Or more specifically, it brings me back to pondering how our own design process can learn more from kids splashing joyfully in rain puddles -- where perhaps the spirit of wonder and the unabashed desire to discover is the governing ethos– rather than in the ways we’ve historically created buildings called schools.

About the Author: 

Christian Long is an educator, school planner, plausible-futures seeker, and passionate advocate for innovative learning communities, having spent the last 20 years teaching, coaching, leading experiential education programs, and designing schools.

Devising a New Strategy for Great School Food

By Greg Christian 

As our lives have become more and more hectic due to the demands of living in today’s society, our eating patterns have shifted to consuming fast convenient foods during less structured eating occasions.  Families rarely gather around the table to enjoy a home-cooked meal together anymore. Meals are now quick and on the go.  In general today’s younger generation has not learned how to make healthy food choices and older generations have forgone healthy food choices and often do not cook meals.  Just look around at the next gathering you attend.

In recent years many groups including: garden/local food/composting advocates; government organizations such as the USDA, Let’s Move, and the EPA; parent groups clamoring for better food; and students storming board meetings demanding better school food across the country have all been focused on trying to make school food better.

Clearly these groups are working very hard to make an impact on children’s eating habits, but many students are still unsure about where their foods come from and how they should eat healthy. Students at many schools are eating mostly processed foods that they end up throwing away (at least 40% of what they take is being tossed into the trash can, according to a food waste study I did with the EPA in 2016).

Is there anything that can tie these silos together to make real change happen in our school dining centers? The ONE ingredient that can and will bring all the silos into one congruent shared vision is scratch cooking.  Scratch cooking in schools is where it needs to start in order to help students learn how to make healthy food choices for life.

This may sound easy enough, but it is not. The system is stacked against scratch cooking. Commodity purchasing and the reimbursable meal program (USDA) make it nearly impossible to produce good tasting, healthy meals. A majority of schools rely on the reimbursable meal program as well as the trend to fast, convenient, processed foods that so many of us have become accustomed to.

My partners in sustainable school food and I have worked in school food environments nationwide for many years. During this time, we have learned that people simply need to get back to the basics of cooking foods from scratch (without being held hostage to commodity programs) in order to make real change. Wholesome, good-tasting food can be the catalyst to make a difference throughout the school and into the community. 

We have developed a proven process to achieve the goal of serving fabulous school food in a sustainable system. The following steps build sustainable food systems that engage all members of the school community.

Step 1 - Assess Reality

To start the process, we need to identify how a school currently approaches its food service. Our first step is to perform an assessment where we make on-site observations and ask questions to determine the current reality is in the school.

Step 2 – Determine the Vision and Develop the Strategy

Once we know the lay of the land, we then develop a vision for the future. We meet with members of the kitchen staff, students, parents, school administration, and some community members to determine what is important to the school community as it pertains to food, sustainability, and engagement.  We find that it helpful to let people vent their frustrations and then let them talk about all that they are trying to accomplish and what they have already tried to lead students to make healthy food choices as well as be good stewards of the earth. The feedback is used to lay out a strategy with benchmarks, so there are clear outcomes and quantifiable results.

Step 3 – Implement the Strategy and Engage the School Community    

Once the strategy is developed, we make sure that all stakeholders are in agreement. Then it’s time to implement the strategy, engage the school community and start COOKING! It is critical to track all data points so that progress can be continuously measured. We also identify where any funding may be needed to improve the kitchen equipment or facility. To be the most effective in driving food and sustainability education throughout the school, we often suggest to our school clients that they consider hiring a green team coordinator to lead these education initiatives.

Source the Ingredients First –Then Build the Menu Based on those Ingredients

Flavorful meals are the result of fresh ingredients. Therefore, by determining which local ingredients are in-season and best priced, it is possible to source meal components that are optimal for cooking great tasting meals from scratch that students will love!  This way of planning is not a common practice in many commercial kitchens today. It takes time, preparation, and lots of practice to get there, but once this method is in place it leads to sourcing more local foods which taste better than foods that have traveled great distances.  It’s no secret that eating flavorful foods that taste great is more enjoyable. 

Once we establish our ingredient base we can then plan the menu.  When the menu is built based on the ingredients, similarly to the way upscale restaurants source seasonal ingredients and build the menu, the result is better tasting food.

We also believe in eliminating variety. Let there be one fabulous entrée a day that kids will eat, with a fantastic salad bar, with homemade dressings, hard boiled eggs, maybe even a ‘make your own sandwich’, for those that don’t want the entrée. Reducing variety and waste will offset any additional funding it may take to serve fresh foods from scratch. We have demonstrated that a scratch-cooking foodservice program can be achieved with the funding that is already in place.

Once the menu has been built and we know what we want to cook, serve, store and hold for different day parts, then the kitchen may be assessed to determine if any remodeling will be needed. Most people go to remodeling first because it looks like something is happening. But if you don’t assess and design based on menu, these decisions will result in wasting money or overspending. A peak into existing school districts will reveal that most kitchens are underutilized based upon how the district currently feeds students. Resources are literally being wasted.

Start Cooking!

Once the ingredients are sourced and the menu is planned then we start cooking! Here is where the edge of the knife comes in. It must be sharp and fast (or get fast).  Fresh ingredients heading towards local and organic are key to success. Direction and leadership for the kitchen team will result in confidence that they can ‘scratch-cook’ in real-time so the food is served at the height of flavor, it looks great and kids eat it! The act(s) of growing, harvesting, cooking and eating are at the center of all we are. The act of cooking homemade meals stirs memories, makes memories and creates a social well being (of sorts) that instills so many healthy things in our lives. The bottom line is that we need to see happy people wielding knives and cutting boards in the kitchen. There is a special kind of joy a child feels when they see someone cares enough to take the time and effort to cook a good meal or bake a fresh treat.  The other by-product is happy, proud employees.

Measure Waste

Waste measurement is key to identifying success or failure in the front and back of the house. The information must be processed (used) regularly to be of value.  In one study (Punahou School on Oahu in 2008). Student waste was measured for several days. One day the waste was pushing 40%. Since it was the last day we let students know why we were weighing the waste. Several felt the need to explain the reason for their waste that particular day. It led to some very interesting conversation about why food was wasted. In this case, (40%) tofu was the main entrée (commodity) and it was slathered in teriyaki sauce. The kids simply ate around it.

The old adage ‘the way to a man’s heart is though his stomach’ is still true today except that it should be modified to say ‘the way to a healthy heart is through healthy food and lifestyle. Studies have shown that having a chef or culinary presence in the school cafeteria to interact with students through taste tests and demonstrations is beneficial. A 2012 study conducted in Boston Public Schools found that middle school students eating in school cafeterias with chefs/culinary leadership were more likely to eat whole grains, and consumed more servings of vegetables per day than students in cafeterias without chefs.

In the end it’s all about serving great food in a sustainable system. Responsibility is not on the food service workers alone, but rather it is a shared responsibility with the school and families as well. Growing happy, healthy children should be integrated into every aspect of the school and at home. Involving stakeholders creates ownership and food can be the common thread. Schools across the country are struggling to keep enrollment up due to charter schools and open enrollment. Parents and students have more choices that ever. All things being equal food quality can play an important role in the decision-making process.

Devising a new strategy for great school food takes commitment, but it is worth the hard work to have healthy students who are engaged and better prepared to learn. It is possible to aim for a higher standard for the students we are feeding and honor the earth for giving us sustenance, and each other by remembering that we did not get to the fast paced, processed food world overnight. By combining our commitment, respect, determination, and hard work, our children will learn about healthy food choices.

About the Author:

Chef Greg Christian is a sustainable food service consultant, chef, author and entrepreneur. His company, Beyond Green Sustainable Food Partners, measures strategies and solutions for organizations interesting in making the switch to more sustainable food service platforms. Learn more at www.beyondgreenpartners.com.

Learning Spaces for Gen Z

By Dwight Carter and Mark White 

One of the hottest topics in education today is space redesign. Educators see how their operations are being buffeted by the global disruptions that are reshaping society — and they are beginning to envision new ways to design schools. 

Here are four quick tips applied in the design of Clark Hall, an award-winning high school building in Gahanna, Ohio, that effectively combines space, global skills, and technology with the needs of today’s learners. 

Tip 1: Think Starbucks 

As educators ask how to redesign their schools, a quick answer should be: “Think Starbucks!” When we walk into Starbucks, we have lots of choices: we can drink hot or cold coffee, eat croissants or cookies, sit at the bar or a table, or perhaps in a soft chair or even outside beneath an umbrella. Starbucks is all about giving the customer options in a relaxed atmosphere. 

And that’s the way learning spaces need to be designed today. 

Today’s students are Gen Z. They text, swipe, connect, hangout in person and virtually, and view the world differently than their predecessors. They have been using the internet since before they began to walk, and it’s given them choices their entire lives. When they get tired of Netflix, they might change to Hulu or YouTube. When they get tired of one song they switch to another one on their streaming iTunes or Spotify. When they skim articles on their phones, they are scanning the bullet points and looking for videos to speed up their learning. 

Gen Z students love options; they love Starbucks. But when they walk into schools today, they usually power off their devices and sit in classrooms designed for a 20th century industrial learning model — an era that has been replaced by the Knowledge Age and the global economy. They often sit in straight rows in square classrooms and do the assignments the teachers have designed and in the time allotted to them.

Instead, Gen Z students should be given options in: 

• how they choose to complete their assignments
• how much time they need to finish their work and do a high quality job
• how their learning should be assessed
• where they sit — in student desks or beanbag chairs, at high top tables, on soft chairs or exercise balls, or even on carpet squares on the floor

Put another way, schools need to move from the Boring Age to the Starbucks Age. Learning no longer has to be a black coffee in a Styrofoam cup — it should be a venti, half-soy, double chocolate, iced vanilla Frappuccino® in an insulated mug. With whipped cream on top. 

Tip 2: Teach Global Skills for a Global Economy 

Seen any university libraries recently? They don’t look like the old, quiet repositories of facts any more. The traditional rows of brown bookshelves with musty books are rapidly disappearing. They are being digitized and replaced by all kinds of seating options ranging from small conference rooms to huge open areas where students can sit in natural lighting and work at their laptops. The spaces are designed to let students: 

• think critically, either silently or while engaged with others
• create new products that range from papers to fully developed, multi-media projects 
• work collaboratively in small groups to exchange ideas and go deeper into the assignments
• make presentations to each other and communicate via the internet with peers in their class or in other parts of the world 

Many universities and corporations understand success in the 21st century will hinge upon the ability to apply information in new ways. One of the most innovative companies in the world is Google. To get ideas on learning space redesign, google a Google workspace. You’ll see games and pool tables, funky furniture, bright colors, and other features that spark creativity. The world is becoming less formal as it becomes more connected and more creative ― these are the workspaces of the future. 

In contrast, most K-12 classrooms today are not designed to spark innovation; they are designed to foster a teacher-dominated environment where students sit independently and show their content mastery by using pens and pencils to write answers on paper. As teachers insert more global skills into their curriculum and move from being disseminators of information to facilitators of learning, students will need to move around the classroom, work in the hallways, find collaborative conference rooms, and make presentations in large common spaces. 

In other words, schools don’t have to resemble the ones we knew in the 20th century: they need to look like the universities and work spaces where their students will be spending the rest of their lives. When global skills become just as important in schools as standardized testing, then students will move seamlessly from one stage of life to the next. 

Tip 3: Make Technology the Foundation of Learning

The average American high school student spends six to nine hours per day in front of a screen of some type. Most of those hours are before school and after school, or perhaps in small increments of time during the school day when students surf their smart phones to get their technology fix. While more technology is now making its way into classrooms, too many educators still rely on textbooks that are supplemented by occasional forays onto the web. 
Schools have no choice but to move to a teaching and learning system predicated on technology usage—because our students live in a technology-heavy world. As learning space is redesigned, educators should ask: 

• How can the learning space foster effective technology usage? Is there room for students to comfortably use their devices alone or in groups? Can the space be designed so that groups don’t bother students who are working alone? 

• Is the furniture designed so that students can sit comfortably with their laptops or tablets? 

• How can social media be used to enhance instruction and communication? 

• How many plugs are available for charging devices? 

• The only place most students use pens and pencils today is in schools; if given a choice they’d rather text on a smart phone or type on a tablet. Technology is not a luxury; it’s a necessity — and the learning space can enhance how it is used. 

Tip #4: Start Small and Involve the Students

Most educators don’t have the luxury of building a new classroom or building. Luckily, space redesign can be done on a small budget in all types of buildings, even the oldest ones. Some quick, cheap fixes include: 

• adding some bright paint to walls
• putting a few soft chairs or exercise balls in one corner of a classroom
• converting part of a hallway or cafeteria to a new type of space by adding new paint, furniture, rugs, or carpet squares
• turning a large storage room into a collaborative learning space
• shifting the school library, or one part of it, into a 21st century environment by adding bright, comfortable chairs

When wondering how to begin, educators can ask the ultimate authority: their students. Great starter questions are: “Which furniture is most comfortable for you? What colors do you like? What ideas do you have for how to use the space? Do you see any other things we can do to make the space more fun and to help you learn?”  Students are the new partners in education; they should have a voice in how they are educated and how schools are designed. 
It used to be that educators could enter the profession and teach the same way in the same types of classrooms from the beginning of their careers until they retired 30 years later, but that era is gone. Now they must be comfortable with being uncomfortable. The days of mastery have been replaced by a career of constant adaptation to new expectations, new teaching styles — and new types of learning spaces for Gen Z. 

About the Authors:

Dwight Carter and Mark White have worked together for over 15 years, first in the Gahanna-Jefferson Public Schools in Gahanna, Ohio, where they were both administrators, and now as authors, speakers and consultants. Together they led the team of teachers, students, and community members in the design of Clark Hall, a high school building that was named the Best in Tech 2012 by Scholastic because of its innovative use of global skills, technology, and learning space to teach Generation Z. They recently coauthored (with Clark Hall architect Gary Sebach) What’s in Your Space? 5 Steps for Better School and Classroom Design, which is published by Corwin Press.

Disruptive Classroom Technologies: A Framework for Innovation in Education

By Dr. Sonny Magana

I want to tell you a little story: There was once lived a pioneering designer who invented technologies to make work and life easier and more productive. He worked long hours developing and iterating until he invented something completely new and extraordinary. He promoted his new technology as transformational, even revolutionary. The technology tool transformed nearly every human endeavor into which it is applied. Billions of dollars exchanged hands and tremendous value was generated. The designer decided to market this new technology into education by highlighting the inherently transformational nature of the tool. He confidently asserted, “Books will soon be obsolete in schools; our school system will be completely changed inside of ten years!” Ten years passed. Books didn’t become obsolete. Schools didn’t change. The promising new technology had minimal impact on student achievement. 

Does that story sound familiar?  

It should. It should also serve as a cautionary tale, but not a modern one. The year? 1913. The pioneering designer? Thomas Alva Edison. The transformational technology? Motion pictures. 

This anecdote illustrates a number of issues regarding the selling and marketing of technology tools in education, but one in particular should be taken as paramount: exploding the myth of technological determinism. Technological determinism is a kind of theoretical mindset which suggests that simply putting digital tools into educational settings will automatically transform what happens in those settings. It’s reflective of the movie Field of Dreams in which Kevin Costner’s character hears a disembodied voice imploring him, “If you build it, they will come,” The only difference is that the disembodied voice of technological determinism says, “If they [your education customers] buy it [technology], transformation will come.” The reality, for the last century, has fallen far short of that myth. 

I’m an educational futurist and so my work focuses on harnessing the immense potential of digital tools to enhance what transpires in teaching and learning environments. At this risk of sounding like a heretic, I have to make a statement about technology in an educational context: Digital educational technologies have no inherent value in and of themselves. Zero. They are inert. They don’t do anything by themselves. But I also have to add a qualifier: The value of digital technologies in education is made manifest not by their presence, but by the manner in which they are used. 

That should sound reasonable to you, or even self-evident. The trickier part is understanding how to reliably use technology tools to enhance instructional quality and learning productivity. 

I’ve been studying the impact of digital tools in education for 34 years. That’s a long time to observe the phenomenon of digital disruptions in the realm of teaching and learning. I’ve taken a serious look at the impact of digital tools in education and have seen distinct patterns emerge over time — patterns which I’ve tested with the tools of the researcher: inquiry design, observation, data collection, analysis, interpretation, and synthesis. One common pattern I’ve witnessed for the last four decades is called the “novelty effect.” 

I first saw evidence of the novelty effect in 1984 while studying the impact on student engagement of the Apple IIe and a software program called “The Oregon Trail.” The sample was a group of inner city middle school students in Camden, New Jersey. At first, students’ engagement levels were very high as they learned to interact with the computer program, and each other, to make decisions, plan ahead, and respond to the consequences of their decisions. Then something strange happened — or not so strange, really, if you’ve ever spent any time around middle school students — they got bored…and then disruptive. Quickly. The level of engagement dropped like a wagon train careening off a cliff. There are only so many times one can die from a snake bite or drown in the Blue River before one’s attention starts to strain. 

Unfortunately, when it comes to digital tools for schools, education has been on a novelty effect roller coaster. Student engagement goes up at first, and then almost always comes back down as the novelty of the tool wears off. One new technology tool after another has been purchased based on the digital promise of increasing student engagement — which may indeed occur in the short run. But in time that high level of engagement will almost always drop off.    

Here’s one implication of the novelty effect: If your sales and marketing messaging to schools only focuses on the attributes of your product and how it will increase student engagement, then over time you run the risk of losing the trust of your customers. However, if you focus on presenting the technology tools you are selling in a manner that is reflective of high impact use of your tool, then over time you will earn the reputation as a trusted advisor. So, how can you know what is reflective of high impact use?

Here is another pattern I’ve observed from compounding evidence: When technology tools are used to replace teachers, on average, one can expect very small to small gains in student achievement. When digital tools are used to supplement teachers’ current instructional practices, one can expect modest gains in student achievement. But when technology tools are used to enhance instructional and learning practices that are well grounded in sound research and theory, one can expect large to very large gains in student achievement. 

I recently synthesized my life’s work on solving the wicked problem of technology integration into my latest book, Disruptive Classroom Technologies: A Framework for Innovation in Education. My hope is to disrupt the long-standing narrative about technology in education by providing an evidence-based framework that increments technology use into three distinct domains: Translational, Transformational, and Transcendent. While each stage is important, the impact of translational technology tool use — that is, simply translating teaching and learning tasks from an analogue to a digital realm — is anemic. However, the strategies associated with transformational and transcendent technology tool use, as I’ve defined and identified in Disruptive Classroom Technologies, have an impact on student learning that is equivalent to three or more additional years of student achievement in a single academic year, perhaps even more. That is clearly an idea worth pursuing and sharing with your customers.

As a nation, we would all benefit by learning more about and sharing transformational and transcendent technology use in schools. For folks serving schools in the educational technology industry, doing so will bring benefits that are both immediate and sustainable. So now I have a question: Are you willing to help shatter the myth of technological determinism? Let’s have a catch and find out…

About the Author:

Dr. Anthony J. “Sonny” Magana III is an award-winning educational futurist, best-selling author, and pioneering educational technology researcher. Sonny is a highly sought-after leadership consultant, speaker, and instructional coach with more than thirty years’ experience helping educational systems around the world realize the power of transcendent learning. The author of numerous research studies and articles, Sonny’s newest book, Disruptive Classroom Technologies: A Framework for Innovation in Education, was recently published through Corwin Press to wide international acclaim. Sonny can be reached via Twitter @sonnymagana or at www.maganaeduction.com.

The Growing Demand for Early Childhood Education

Communal spaces at Central Valley Early Learning Center enable teachers to observe the activities from a distance, while allowing students to exercise choice, build independence, and create a sense of ownership. — NAC Architecture

by Melissa A. McFadgen, Principal, AIA LEED AP and Helena L. Jubany, Principal, FAIA LEED AP

As the body of research on the effectiveness of early learning centers continues to grow, the value in designing more of these institutions has become increasingly apparent. Recent research estimates that the brain grows the most in the first five years of life, thus programs directed at this age demographic have proved to yield astonishing results.1,2

When the design of early learning centers is grounded in the science of developmental psychology and education, these educational environments can address multiple domains of development that positively stimulate young children's physical and cognitive growth. These high-quality early childhood programs and centers produce lasting increases in positive academic achievement that set the students up for success as they move into the K-12 educational environment and beyond. They are also more likely to develop students' social competence traits—such as sharing, cooperating, or helping other kids—competencies that lead to a higher likelihood of attaining higher education and well-paying jobs in adulthood.3

Why are ELCs so important?

There is an incredible amount of recent research in brain development and early learning. Studies show the earlier kids are enrolled in early education the chances of them dropping out of high school diminishes and enrollment in higher education increases. Children who participate in quality preschool programs are:

·  18 percent more likely to be employed

·  24 percent more likely to own a house

·  53 percent less likely to have multiple arrests

·  More likely to make higher earnings than those who do not participate4

A 20-year retrospective study found that for every one-point increase in a child's social competency score in kindergarten, they were twice as likely to obtain a college degree, and 46% more likely to have a full-time job by age 25. And, for every one-point decrease in a child's social skill score in kindergarten, he or she had a 67% higher chance of having been arrested in early adulthood, a 52% higher rate of binge drinking and an 82% higher chance of being in or on a waiting list for public housing.1

However, leveraging what we are learning from science and ensuring positive brain development is not the only appeal to instituting early learning centers. The Childcare Quality & Early Learning Center for Research and Professional Development (CQEL) is one of the many programs leading the way with early childhood research, examining how to improve and support existing early learning standards and programs in an effort to ensure truly equal access to education. Low family income, low parent education, and language barriers can all be factors in preventing a child's academic success but CQEL is committed to mitigating these obstacles and closing the achievement gap. Research continues to emphasize the importance of early intervention as the most predictable tool to redirect a student's educational career.

Children facing challenges from lower income, to immigrant families, to children with development delays likely experience the greatest benefit from this educational experience. We've seen it first-hand at the Central Valley Early Learning Center. We started with a vacant grocery store and transformed it into a school that supports a wide variety of pre-K students, primarily underserved students and their families. Their incredible journey is documented in this video. 

10 Essential Characteristics of High Quality Early Learning Environments

An early learning center is not simply a 'scaled down' elementary school. It needs to be designed to reflect the unique needs of children under the age of five, their families, and the wide array of professionals housed in an ELC.

1. Higher staff to student ratios. At the early learning level, particularly for those qualifying for the Early Childhood Education and Assistance Program (ECEAP) or Head Start programs, it's not only about educating the student; it's about educating the whole family. Providing resources and support to navigate supplemental assistance programs for the improvement of the entire family are core principles of early childhood education programs.This increased staff-to-student ratio and the promotion of family engagement in the facility translates to the need for additional parking on the site compared to most elementary schools.

2. Increased Office/Conference Room Space. The administrative suite has two separate functions: running the school (similar to an elementary school) and a family support component (not typically in an elementary school). In addition to the typical office and meeting space within an elementary school, the family support staff and increased therapy specialists in an ELC require additional office space and conference rooms for working with students and meeting with each family.

3. Curriculum Mandates and Spatial Organization. The facility design is part of the scoring process for many curriculum requirements mandated by various licensing jurisdictions such as the Department of Early Learning and, if designed well, will contribute to the score. At Central Valley Early Learning Center, most of their curriculum is delivered in their classrooms and licensing requires students have the choice of a minimum of nine activities during free choice time. These activities also must vary throughout the year, with the classroom designed to support this wide array of activities, from areas for quiet reading, to sensory activities with water or sand, to dramatic play, to building blocks. As early learning experts, our role is not only to design the facilities to accommodate multiple activities, but also to work with the teacher on how the design of the classroom can enhance their ability to work with each student.

4. Storage, Storage, Storage. With all the required activities in the classroom you need room to store all the supplies, furniture, mats, etc. Personal items like coats and backpacks are stored outside the classroom. That way, cubbies can be eliminated from inside of the classrooms allowing more space for educational activities.

5. Toilet/Sink versus Student/Staff Ratios. One of the primary drivers to the number of students allowed within each classroom is the number of toilet and sink fixtures: 1 water closet and hand wash station per 15 kids. This is out of sync with most adult-to-student ratios of 1 adult per 10 kids, with a typical classroom targeting between 15-18 kids. Understanding these differing ratios is critical to maximizing fixture count to serve the targeted number of students, and avoid limiting a classroom capacity because these numbers are not in alignment.

Small children need more supervision, so having a bathroom accessed directly from their space is an important consideration. Efficient toilet and sink layout allows for more time to be spent on educational activities and less time standing in line waiting for a turn to wash hands.

6. Outdoor Play and Connection to Nature. Access to the outdoors is essential because at this age children learn through playing. Introducing a variety of interactive, sensory-rich activities in an outdoor learning environment provides access to the outdoors that many of the students may not have at home. Early experiences with the natural world have been positively linked with the development of imagination and the sense of wonder, not just gross motor skill development, so outdoor play is especially important for children with special needs.

7. Food Service. Students eat within their room, family style. Learning how to navigate meals in a group setting is critical to social development.

8. Special Needs. You should design the entire center with special needs in mind and consider lighting quality, acoustics, and materials for safety. The types of materials used in spaces are extremely important for creating emotional and physical interaction. Kids learn through all their senses, but touch is considered the most influential for children under the age of three. Thus thoughtful selection of materials that children can interact with while also holding up over time is imperative.

9. Multi-use Spaces, Shared Spaces, and Flexibility. Many ELCs are co-located at the same campus as elementary schools allowing for shared facilities. Others have 'wrap around care' which means they accept children from 0-3. For this age group, additional spaces are needed to change diapers, crib rooms, storage for sleeping mats, etc. Classrooms can potentially serve multiple age groups, but there are distinct differences for licensing and building code restrictions for children under the age of three versus children between ages 3-6.

Flexibility of space, an essential feature in any ELC, is exemplified in the 680-student Central Valley Early Learning Center which is housed in a former vacant grocery store along with a 300-student alternative high school, Mica Peak—representing both ends of the PK-12 educational spectrum. Intentional crossover spaces encourage the two programs to build off each other. High school students get credit for working with ELC students. High school art students paint murals for the early learning students and together they build gardens that develop confidence for all students. The symbiotic relationship of these programs is facilitated by the building design, creating opportunities that previously did not exist.

10. The three "S's"… Safety, Security and Scale. ELCs must instill the foundational knowledge that schools are safe and secure places by creating warm, cozy spaces in addition to group activity areas. Within a stable environment, the students will be able to flourish without inhibiting emotions such as fear or uncertainty, interfering with their education. Since these students are not yet literate, the building design must speak to them and assure them these spaces are truly made for them to grow, learn and succeed.

Summary

Early learning is a big deal! There are only 2,000 days between when a child is born and when they begin kindergarten. And as research shows, it is during this time that their most crucial development occurs, forming a solid foundation for the years that follow. Our brains are built based on the environment in which we grow up, and quality learning experiences that begin at birth are the key to a child's success later in life. At NAC, we understand that a well-designed physical environment is a critical component to realizing the full benefits of early learning programming. Whether it's strategic placement of windows and fixtures at a child's level, interactive sensory furnishings that encourage cognitive social development, or the integration of the classroom with outdoor play space that sparks curiosity about nature, we are dedicated to creating enriching environments that support each child's development, instills a sense of safety and security, and is warm and welcoming for the families they serve.

References:

1Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University (2016). From Best Practices to Breakthrough Impacts: A Science-Based Approach to Building a More Promising Future for Young Children and Families. http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu

2First 5 California. (n.d.). Child's Brain Development. Retrieved September 25, 2017, from First 5 California: http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu

3Jones D. E., Greenberg M., Crowley M. (2015). Early social-emotional functioning and public health: The relationship between kindergarten social competence and future wellness. American Journal of Public Health, 105(11), 2283–2290.

4Schweinhart, L. J., & Weikart, D. P. (1993). Success by Empowerment: The High/Scope Perry Preschool Study through Age 27. Young Children, 49(1), 54-58.

5Jones D. E., Greenberg M., Crowley M. (2015). Early social-emotional functioning and public health: The relationship between kindergarten social competence and future wellness. American Journal of Public Health, 105(11), 2283–2290

About the Authors:

Melissa McFadgen, AIA, LEED AP is a Principal with NAC Architecture and has dedicated her 17-year career to designing educational facilities. She has been involved in over 25 Pre-K through 12 school designs, including several early childhood facilities such as the new Central Valley Early Learning Center.
With more than a dozen of her projects having received design awards, Melissa was recently honored as one of the Inland Northwest's "20 Under 40." Melissa holds a Bachelors of Environmental Design and a Masters of Architecture from Montana State University. She has been a licensed architect since 2002 and has focused her career on creating spaces that truly impact the communities in which they reside.

Helena Jubany, FAIA, LEED AP is the Managing Principal of NAC Architecture’s Los Angeles office. Throughout her 30-year career, Helena has advanced her practice by developing a collaborative process that promotes diversity and advocating for outstanding design with a focus on educational facilities that results in award winning projects. Helena’s leadership in K-12 public school projects resulted in an invitation by the World Bank to set design guidelines with the Brazilian Ministry of Education for the development of schools in 19 Brazilian States.

Creating Classrooms with Missions in Mind

By JD Ferries-Rowe

We gathered around the table in the Teacher’s Resource Center (the TRC), created three years before to give educators a place near both the library and the IT offices where they could plan, play, and learn in the same way that we expected of the students. Around the table were the IT director, an architect, the librarian, the assistant principal and principal and the president of the school. The subject of the meeting, laid out in front of us on large sheets of white paper with computer-assisted drawings in black and our recent notations in red ink was the design of a new library, nearly three years in the making and nearing its conclusion. Thus, it was with some frustration that this celebratory moment was marked by the President saying, “No, I don’t like that. It needs to change.”

The renovation of Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School’s library into an Information Commons was a process 4 years in the making. It involved surveys of students and faculty, research into best practices, a lot of reading about design thinking and library theory, focus groups, and quite a few showroom floors. Our goal was to create a space that would fit our school's mission and be an improved space for the students — our main customers.

Setting a Context

The BJPS library was built in the mid-1980s. The school at that time did not emphasize group work, did not use computers, and was designed for a student body of 500, not our current population of 800. It was anchored by an enormous and imposing circulation desk that sat off to one side like a guard’s tower in a prison. The lighting, original to the buildout, was that classic fluorescent that seemed simultaneously too harsh yet not bright enough for the space. Large wooden “stack” style bookshelves dominated the walls and wings adding to the feeling of cramped space. Twice a day, this feeling became reality when 80% of the student body is released for “Personal Responsibility Time” — when the library was so crowded that students had to be turned away.

The library was surrounded by large hallways dividing the TRC and IT dept from the library proper. Another hallway served as a relatively unused passageway containing a seldom-used computer lab, the computer science classroom (a thrown-together collection of carpet, cobbled together tables and desks, and gorilla shelves filled with old computers and wires), and the entrance to the newly-renovated Wellness  Center. On either side of the large hallway was a catacomb of various work rooms, storage areas, and unused offices that were crowded with old equipment, books, and AV technology that included slide projectors and overheads. Architects who had conducted a space study for us determined that over 30% of the area was either hallway or storage and was considered “unusable by students”.

In addition, the recent change to a 1:1 BYOT model eliminated the need for computer labs and carts (the library had both and another nearby.  Students in need of help with devices were often found to be standing outside the hallway in front of the Teacher Resource Room (TRC) or the IT dept. (a typical machine heavy, cluttered space that is the opposite of an inviting place).

In conducting our surveys and focus groups, we found that students had a number of ideas of their own:

●        They wanted us to emphasize small group spaces (51%) and silent study space (49%).

●        They wanted a social space but also a place where they could get help with research papers.

●        They wanted to build a robot, print a slinky, produce a video, or play with a drone.

●        They wanted to be able to check out a book.

With this diverse assortment of goals in mind, we began the research, design, and dreaming phase. We would tear down the walls that created the hallways and labyrinths of storage cubbies (narrowing it down to one room of storage, a utility sink and bathroom). Utilizing the found space would accommodate 60 more students.

The furniture would be flexible, including standing and sitting tables, large couches, “buoy” stools, and comfortable reading chairs. The circulation desk would be smaller with a “sitting height” side and centered in the space instead of serving as a guard post at the entrance. Small group rooms would give space for students to work in an observable area without disturbing the library as a whole. The large “stacks” would be replaced by counter-height shelves that would be placed in-between populated areas to serve as a sound-buffer.

The IT department would have the prerequisite “cave” of stuff including a relocated server room, but would also have a helpdesk area for students (and someday run by students). The outdated computer science lab would be updated in both equipment and furniture/room design to match the Information commons and the collaborative and innovative learning we were expecting in the space.

Back to the Drawing Board

“No. I don’t like that. It needs to change.”

The issue on the table was the “quiet study space” that was the most popular section of the current library and the most important part of the library for about half the students (based on surveys). We had figured out a few years before that the best way to create a quiet space was to put it as far from the library entrance as possible. It just so happened that this space contained large glass windows that looked out onto the athletic fields and a balcony used by students and adults alike. “We cannot get put large study carrels in a prime location like that!”

Plans were adjusted again, creating a glass-walled room to the side of this space. The glass would be designed to be nearly sound-proofed, would contain flexible furniture that could be used as study carrels or as classroom tables for full class instruction, and the dividers would be removable whiteboards!

Additionally, the largest study room was modified to create a “Makerspace” based off the increased use of 3D printer (awkwardly housed in the TRC) and the clear trend in library build-outs. The plan was to have “zones” for productivity, socializing, and quiet study. We started the demolition phase over a spring break holiday with a scheduled opening for Fall of the next school year.

What we learned:

●        The president was right. The quiet study space was well placed in the redesign. No adult has ever had to quiet it down. The visual cues of the glass wall and divider-tables are enough.

●        “Zoning” requires similar cues that we didn’t adequately design to be natural, particularly when 25% of the school’s population is in the space working and socializing.

●        The Makerspace outgrew the “study room” in one year. It was moved into the “Teacher room” which became much less utilized when the large glass windows were installed (oops). The space now includes VR and AR stations, three 3D printers, a podcasting studio, a Lego wall, and animation boxes.

●        The technical foundations matter: Good wi-fi, easy-to-use printing services (both walk-up and BYOT), digital signage that can be updated easily by non-techs, and a fully staffed helpdesk can make or break the space.

●        The library is still the library: Librarians who enjoy helping students with research, availability of relevant resources (paper and digital), and access to tools are still key.

●        Lighting is a game changer: we used natural-lighting solar tubes for one section of the space and wish we had placed more of it throughout the library. LEDs are a cost saver and brightener. Additionally, light-colored carpet squares (a clean-up must) and light paint will brighten up the space.

●        By keeping furniture modular and varied, we can change the look and use of space to fit the needs and desires of the students and encourage spaces to be used through design process rather than by constant “shushing”.

Ultimately, we are still in the process of learning what works best in the space. This method requires an openness to change and a formal commitment to solicit feedback, reflect on what is working and what is not, and a willingness to admit when something is not working, even if it used to important. Sometimes the best insight is “it needs to change”.

JD Ferries-Rowe is the Chief Information Officer at Brebeuf Jesuit Preparatory School in Indianapolis, IN. He is responsible for Management of the 1:1 BYOT program and all technology and edtech initiatives in the school. JD works closely with the principal's office and others on aligning technology, learning, and curriculum to the mission of the school. He was a presenter at EDspaces 2017.