Connecting Furniture Planning and Student Engagement

by Gwen Morgan

Located in Detroit’s northern suburbs, Bloomfield Hills Schools is a district with a long history of forward-thinking educational instruction. As one of the top performing districts in the country, Bloomfield Hills Schools recognized more than a decade ago the need to redesign its facilities and re-imagine its programming to support the changing educational needs of 21st century students, preparing them for success in college and the workplace. 

Planning for the new Bloomfield Hills High School began with a year-long facilitation process, which was driven by the district’s Ten Guiding Principles of Teaching and Learning. Extensive community engagement led to the development of a concept that consolidated the two existing high schools – Andover and Lahser – into one state-of-the-art facility on the Andover site featuring small learning communities. 

Co-designed by Stantec’s Berkley, Mich. office and Fielding Nair International, the resulting 350,000-square-foot building opened in August 2015 and includes 233,000 square feet of new construction and 117,000 square feet of renovations made to the former Andover High School. 

The central design concept lies within nine learning communities, each of which integrate core classes in a collaborative, technology-rich learning environment to encourage collaboration, student directed learning, project-based learning and interdisciplinary instruction. 

Each learning community includes a wide variety of learning spaces – from small group rooms to larger break out spaces, to rooms for individual work – all of which are designed to meet the needs of different kinds of learners and different kinds of activities. The design of each community offers students and teachers the flexibility to ebb and flow from spaces, encouraging interdisciplinary instruction and a more collegiate-like experience.

Outfitting the Space

Designed to support pedagogy that places a greater focus on personalization and collaboration, the high school looks and functions unlike any other. Armed with this understanding, the district recognized early in the design process that they would need furniture solutions that would align with the instructional model.

A furniture pilot program conducted simultaneous to construction of the new school offered a unique opportunity for the district to embrace changes in pedagogy, understand new classroom environments, and evaluate the influence that furniture and technology has on the learning experience. 

As part of the pilot program, teachers and students in nine classrooms tested a variety of furniture solutions and evaluated it for its ability to transition from activity to activity, adapt from subject to subject, and encourage student engagement. At the end of the year-long study, the results directly influenced furniture selection for the new school.


Collecting the Data

The study began by gathering information from the 18 teachers slated to teach in the classrooms throughout the school year. This “pre-occupancy” survey focused on learning more about what types of furniture the teachers used in past classrooms, what kinds of furniture they thought would work well in the future, and how important they believed furniture solutions are to the learning environment. In their responses, teachers clearly expressed that type, comfort, flexibility, and variety of furniture has a significant impact on the both the teaching and learning experience.

Following furniture installation in the test classrooms, student surveys and onsite observations were conducted periodically each semester. In the surveys, students were asked to identify the courses they had taken in the test classrooms, their grade level, and which types of furniture they felt were most successful in supporting their learning. 

The survey results identified a number of student furniture preferences. For instance, students saw standing height tables and two-person tables with chairs as helpful for small group learning. Tablet arm chairs were popular for individual work, but were one of the least supportive solutions when it came to transitioning from activity to activity within a class period. For this mid-class period transition, larger tables to seat four to six people seemed to work better. Students consistently agreed on the positive impact that comfort and ergonomics had on their learning experience. 

The onsite observations consisted of two full days at the end of each semester, during which time observers rotated through the classrooms, taking note of how students used the furniture. Additionally, posters showing a variety of furniture layouts were placed in the classrooms and students were asked to select which furniture types they had used that day and what furniture type they thought might have worked better. The most popular selections were large project tables and standing-height tables, while tablet arm chairs and individual desks were the least popular.

A visual observation of the students using the furniture yielded additional trends. For instance, researchers found that incorporating a variety of furniture solutions within a room seemed to work well for both individual and group work. In addition, varying heights allowed strong visual connection between teachers and students. In smaller rooms, the furniture was moved less, due to lack of space, and was more likely to remain set up in rows for the duration of a period. Chairs on casters greatly eased movement between individual and group work. In many cases, storage was an issue, with backpacks taking up quite a bit of floor space.

Results

Armed with a year’s worth of research and study, the team compiled its findings as they set out to plan the furniture for the new school, focusing on the furniture’s ability to transition, adapt and promote student engagement.

Transition 

When it comes to transitioning from activity to activity, the researchers found that while teachers and students appreciated a variety of furniture to choose from, having too many options made the room feel chaotic. In order to achieve balance, findings suggested that classrooms should have enough space to move furniture in a way that best supports their current activity. Also, furniture should be intuitive in order to minimize the need for teacher training on how to take advantage of the different options.

Adaptability

The ability to adapt a room for different subjects, teaching styles, or uses was found to be critical to the new school’s learning community format. Results emphasized the importance of resetting the furniture between classes to a general function layout. In order to reduce the time spent moving the furniture, students needed to become familiar with the standard arrangements so they could adjust and adapt to their surroundings quickly. 

In addition, the study showed that the furniture needed to be able to adapt to technology. While the technology used for the study was not the same as what would be used in the new school, the main lesson remained the same: the overall design should be proactive and focus on how the furniture could best support the day’s activity, meaning accessibility to charging stations and power locations.

Student Engagement

Nearly across the board, students agreed that furniture has an impact on both their level of engagement and the way they learn throughout a class period. Furthermore, results asserted that students recognized the role the furniture plays in supporting collaborative activities like group work.

When it comes down to it, in order to engage students, comfort matters! Students reported furniture that allowed for posture change and choice helped make students “learning-ready.” Most preferred were two-person tables and standing height tables, while only a few students preferred ottomans. 

Students also noted that while ease of furniture rearrangement is important in supporting the way they learn, too much movement actually decreased student engagement, so strategies should be in place to manage this. Wheels on seating were much preferred over wheels on tables.

Implementing the Findings

When Bloomfield Hills High School opened in August 2015, it had an innovative pedagogy, and a cutting-edge furniture program to match. The majority of the enclosed student spaces are furnished with larger tables and chairs on casters, with a few standing height tables, as was preferred by staff and students in the study. Smaller learning studios contain single-person desks and chairs for more individual work. The project rooms feature larger tables for four to six people, but maintain the same mobility offered in the learning studios. The common areas offer a combination of tables and lounge furniture to complement the more formal learning areas.

The information gathered from the surveys, test classrooms, and observations collectively gave the design team a strong direction about what would work for the new Bloomfield Hills High School. Equally as important, the pilot program worked as a conduit for teachers and students to get a feel for how a new model of teaching and learning will occur in the new school. By applying the successful solutions of the pilot classrooms to the new furniture package, the district ended up with a tried-and-true solution from day one of class.           

GWEN MORGAN is an interior designer with significant experience in the design of educational facilities, both higher education and K-12 buildings, including LEED projects.  She has also managed numerous FF&E projects, from programming, budgeting, furniture and finish selection, to bid document preparation, installation coordination and supervision.  She currently leads Stantec’s Research and Benchmarking team for FF&E and Technology.

Reimagining 21st Century Learning Environments

by Helen Soulé and David Ross

INTRODUCTION

Perhaps the best way to think of 21st century learning environments is to view them as the support systems that organize the conditions in which humans learn best. These systems accommodate the unique needs of all and enhance the positive relationships so important to effective learning. Learning environments are the social and technical structures that inspire students and educators to attain the knowledge and skills the 21st century demands of us all.

Within today’s 24/7 learning cycle, the cumulative power of relationships among physical spaces, technology, time, culture, human networks, and policy deepen learning in significant ways. When these systems are intentionally integrated into a seamless whole each system reinforces the other.  These support systems are valuable not as ends, but as means to a greater goal — to helping children grow emotionally, socially, physically, and academically. 

P21’s Framework for 21st Century Learning outlines the multiple student outcomes that modern life demands. It was developed with input from teachers, education experts, and business leaders to define and illustrate the skills and knowledge students need to succeed in work, life and citizenship, as well as the support systems necessary to achieve these outcomes.  While the graphic represents each element distinctly for descriptive purposes, all the components should be seen as fully interconnected in the process of 21st century teaching and learning.

FEATURES OF 21ST CENTURY LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

The term “learning environment” covers not only place and space (e.g. a school, a classroom, a library, an online learning community, etc.) but also the relationships conducive to every learner’s development. 

In order to produce the outcomes we seek, 21st century learning environments must be reimagined as aligned and synergistic systems that:

1. Are driven by a vision of teaching and learning that supports the development of 21st century skills.
2. Provide flexible architectural designs for group, team, and individual learning.
3. Ensure equitable and ubiquitous access to a robust infrastructure and digital tools for learning.
4. Empower and support the “People Network” in learning environments, such as professional learning communities that enable educators to collaborate, share best practices, and integrate 21st century skills into classroom practice.

Such environments foster anytime, anyplace learning tailored to the needs and wants of individuals. The words “just in time” matter far more than “just in case.”

1. Establish a 21st century learning vision

Step one is to establish a vision of learning that includes 21st century skills. This vision encompasses learning environments that extend beyond brick and mortar buildings to virtual opportunities and beyond school programs. Building the collective vision requires input from all learning stakeholders. Once the vision is in place, policy can be developed and plans can be made to create the structures that support this vision. 

P21’s 21st Century Learning Exemplar Program includes Bate Middle School in Danville, Kentucky, which developed an Innovation Plan that redefined learning on the campus. The redesigned college and career curriculum, coupled with the adoption of project-based learning and performance assessments incorporated critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills into every student’s experience. 

2. Design educational structures for 21st century learning 

Physical learning spaces should be flexible and adaptable, enable collaboration, interaction and information sharing, and should be connected with the larger community that surrounds the school. Perhaps the most fundamental guideline is “design for flexibility.” Since no one can predict how educational technologies and teaching modalities will evolve, learning spaces must adapt to whatever changes the future may hold. To achieve this flexibility, architects are designing classrooms, or “learning studios,” with moveable furniture and walls that can easily be reconfigured for different class sizes and subjects. The school building itself should inspire intellectual curiosity and promote social interactions. 

In West Allis, Wisconsin, Walker Elementary School made creative use of existing space to accommodate personalized learning, facilitated by a 1-to-1 iPad implementation. Staff opened up three rooms to create multi-age classrooms in grades 1-3 and re-designed the cafetorium and library to accommodate the fourth and fifth grades.

 3. Ensure access to a robust infrastructure and digital tools for learning

Students, educators and administrators today need access to the digital tools and media-rich resources that will help them explore analog and virtual worlds, express themselves, analyze and shape data, and communicate across borders and cultures.  A robust infrastructure, designed for flexibility and growth, can facilitate these connections. The essential goal of technology, as it is with all systems for learning, is to support people’s relationships to each other and their work. 

A 21st century learning environment blends physical and digital infrastructures to seamlessly support learning. Melding face-to-face with online learning is essential for schools today, but wise educators know achieving such a goal takes careful planning. Perhaps the greatest challenge of educational technology is not finding time and money to obtain hardware or software, or even in anticipating future needs, but in finding ways to adequately support humans in using these tools. Schools such as New Technology High School in Napa, California, have established student “geek squads” to help provide technical support for their peers, as well as administrators and teachers. Co-ownership of the learning environment is a key feature of successful implementation.

4. Empower the “People Network” in learning environments. 

Now we come to the most essential element of all: the “people network.” This is the community of students, educators, parents, business and civic leaders, and policymakers that constitute the human capital of an educational system. 

Organizations, like individuals, need supports and challenges to thrive and grow — as well as the flexible spaces and opportunities that enable productive learning and shared work/play to happen. Research shows that an educational community imbued with a positive culture is more likely to foster innovation and excellence. There is no single culture that will fit all schools — each school must summon its own blend of teaching talents, instructional approaches, and effective leadership to meet the unique learning needs of its community.

Educational partnerships within the extended community are essential in creating links to the arenas that today’s youth will occupy tomorrow — the domains of higher education institutions, the work place, various cultural spheres, and civic life.  Local businesses and community groups are traditional sources of after-school internships and summer jobs, but they can also be important sources of expertise in areas such as media, the arts, science, and technology. Of course, businesses and NGOs can provide resources — financial, physical, and human — to help school stretch their always-limited budgets.   

CONCLUSION

Many schools today still reflect their Industrial Age origins with rigid schedules, inflexible facilities, and fixed boundaries between grades, disciplines, classrooms, and functional roles. The 21st century, though, requires a new conception of education — one that breaks through the silos that separated schools from the real world, educators from each other, and policymakers from the communities they are meant to serve.

The modern world demands learning environments that embrace the diverse world of people, places, and ideas, and are flexible in their arrangements of space, time, technology, and people. These connections will foster healthy cultures of mutual respect and support among students, educators, families, and neighborhoods, serving their lifelong learning and recreational needs, and uniting learners around the world in addressing global challenges and opportunities.

Helen Soulé is Executive Director at the Partnership for 21st Century Learning. At P21 Dr. Soulé has led the organization’s state recruitment and support effort, the Exemplars of 21st Century Learning program, and other initiatives. She is a lifelong educator with P-16 leadership experience at the local, state, and national level, and is the recipient of several awards including 30 "Shapers of the Future" award, E-School News "Impact 30 Award for Excellence", and the Mississippi Educational Computing Association’s Technology Educator of the Year award.

David Ross is Chief Strategy Officer at Partnership for 21st Century Learning. As P21’s CSO, David oversees all of P21’s programs, which span the entire 21st Century Learning Continuum, and its growing state support services. David created and managed the PBL world Conference, and co-authored the Project Based Learning Starter Kit, during his time at the Buck Institute for Education. 

Designing Schools that Keep Kids Safe

Perkins+Will, Dena'ina Elementary School, Wasilla, AK. Photo credit: Kevin G. Smith Photography

By Steve Turckes, Phil Santore and Rachael Dumas

On March 14, 2018, students across the United States staged a walkout to voice their objections to the normalcy of gun violence in our schools. Given the staggering statistics, their actions are understandable. According to CNN, there has been an average of one school shooting every single week in 2018.  An ongoing Washington Post analysis finds that more than 150,000 primary and secondary school students have experienced a campus shooting since the massacre at Columbine High School. The numbers continue to rise and have ignited student-led campaigns like the #NeverAgain movement and the “March for Our Lives” demonstration that took place on March 24.

The onslaught of these tragedies has school communities throughout the U.S. evaluating their safety protocols. The obvious goal: to keep our children safe and to minimize the chances that their school will be the next to receive national coverage for a violent, life-ending act. The debate on how to accomplish this rages on.  Some say we need to design fortress-like facilities with windowless cell-like classrooms. Others highlight that the generally accepted prioritized order of response — “run, hide, fight” — suggests a more transparent environment so that you can see and react to dangerous situations. Then there are those who promote the arming of teachers. 

One thing that should not be debated is the value of human life and that the primary function of our schools is to educate our children. Safety and security in learning environments is a complex issue and while we do not profess to have all of the answers, here we hope to provide rational and justifiable safety measures that can support educational missions and prevent or mitigate threats.

Research on ideal learning spaces calls for agility, student choice and collaborative environments where students and teachers easily move between classrooms and a variety of other flexible spaces. In these environments, transparency gives teachers visibility and puts learning on display. We understand that balancing school security with the innovative, future-ready learning environments our kids need is a complex challenge leading many to ask if it even is possible. We believe it is. 

As design professionals we strive to meet project goals and in the case of schools, the primary mission is to educate. As we work with clients to create safe, future-ready schools, we feel it is important to ask the following:

• How do we balance safety with the educational mission?

• Do we want our children to feel like they are entering a more institutional environment?

• Are we ready to look at physical, technical, and procedural alternatives to maintain the educational mission?

• Are we willing to review rational and justifiable mitigation strategies to meet students’ future needs?

Through our work on the new World Trade Center as well as the new Sandy Hook Elementary School we have learned a great deal, but most importantly we learned that we cannot plan for the irrational. And, if past is prologue, we should not have confidence in our current lawmakers to enact meaningful gun control legislation (although we are inspired by the promise of change resulting from the work of today’s student activists). This understanding leaves us with this: how can we protect students and staff in the immediate future? We recognize that there is no “one-size-fits-all” solution. Our team encourages a participatory community dialogue to find a solution. That being said, we believe in a balanced and layered approach to campus security that begins at the perimeter of the site and integrates Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED). Additionally, there are three areas that we focus on: architecture, technology, and operations.

ARCHITECTURE  

A balanced and layered approach to safety seeks to deter, detect and delay a threat by looking at three areas related to the built environment: campus perimeter, building perimeter and classroom or academic perimeter. The approaches outlined in the CPTED principles — natural surveillance, natural access control, territorial reinforcement, and maintenance — have proven effective in decreasing incidents of crime while improving the quality of space. Since, in emergencies, people follow people, we must always make accessible egress available with well-marked pathways. There are several points to keep in mind here:

Campus Perimeter

• Define the area and express ownership through signage, fencing, landscaping or other features.

• Maximize natural surveillance so one can see possible danger (and so that there is an awareness that someone is watching).

• Develop traffic patterns to help control parking, and separate vehicles from pedestrian walkways.

• Utilize video surveillance where natural surveillance is not possible.

• Manage landscaping as to support natural surveillance.

• Implement lighting programs supporting CPTED principles.

Building Perimeter

• Create an easily identified and secure single point of entry. 

• Discourage easy access.

• Layer the building from the front entry inward with secure zones that can be locked down when necessary. 

• Proactively manage visitors and how they access the building with their understanding that they may be momentarily inconvenienced with questions and perhaps a quick background check.

• Manage after school activities when multiple visitors are present on campus and in the school.

• Secure windows and doors knowing that a door left propped open will quickly undermine other security measures.

Classroom Perimeter

• Secure academic wings — strengthen and utilize smoke partition doors to create another interior layer of resistance. 

• Sight lines — like the exterior, maintaining interior sight lines can be critical to view potential threats. 

• Door Hardware — all door hardware should be a minimum “Grade 1” quality and should be properly installed and maintained.

• Doors and frames — inspect for proper alignment for closing and latching, and review door closers and hinges to ensure full functionality. 

• Enhance glazing with products such as School Guard Glass to delay a forced entry attack.

• Communication — the ability to call for help is the second most critical asset after the ability to secure the building perimeter and interior spaces; multiple means of communications should be available and regularly tested. 

TECHNOLOGY

In addition to the aforementioned architectural strategies, technology is also important. The ability to remotely monitor and control doors is paramount and predicated on knowledge of the incident. The use of well-designed video surveillance systems and other ancillary components provide the supporting data to effect actions of initiating a lock-down or other incident response procedure. When designing a technological system that supports safety measures it is important to remember several points. These include:

• Designing a security program first and then determining the technological tools that will best support that program.

• Use technology as a tool to help mitigate the campus risk profile.

• Understand the capabilities of the staff tasked with monitoring the technology put in place. 

• Organize and implement security technology so it can be used as a force multiplier.

OPERATIONS

Operations include communications, information sharing and situational awareness for everything related to campus activities. However, no amount of planning can prevent a threat if those within the school are not properly trained, empowered, and supported. When designing the operations plan there are several points to keep in mind: 

• Develop programs to increase awareness of the campus population including interactive sessions, technology-based reporting, and a means to report anonymously. 

• Ensure there are effective communications protocols to transmit information in a timely fashion. 

• Develop security staffing programs that are dedicated to campus or schools with specific duties. 

• Develop student participation programs that allow students to report in real time to security and/or administrative staff.

• Utilize “day time” alarm monitoring of emergency egress doors and other low traffic areas to provide security with the maximum time of intervention of a potential criminal act.

• Utilize hand-held technologies such as tablets and smartphones to provide security staff with real time video and alarm conditions.

• Develop communications and greeting procedures for first responders to provide response directions and access to areas as needed.

• Manage security review programs to ensure all physical security components are functioning. 

In addition to the potential threats that originate beyond the borders of the school campus, we need to recognize that many dangerous situations are caused by those on campus everyday — namely the students themselves. Fighting and bullying should be considered when organizing a comprehensive school safety plan. A recent study from the National Center for Education Statistics found that students age 12-18 reported most incidents of bullying take place in transitional areas between classrooms such as hallways and stairwells. In instances like these, transparent design that utilizes glass and clear lines of sight can help to diminish opportunities for bullying. 

While the physical environment and technological solutions are critical in security solutions, we cannot underestimate the incredible importance of human relationships. Our best school leaders understand the critical need for every student to have a meaningful relationship with at least one adult in the building. These relationships make it more likely that negative changes in behavior will be recognized early when interventions and additional help can prevent issues from spiraling out of control.

Our schools have a responsibility to keep our children safe, but they cannot do it alone. It needs to be done in concert with local first responders and the entire community where it is understood that safety is everyone’s responsibility. This is a complex issue, but we believe the balanced and layered approach that elevates the safety and security of our schools — while still prioritizing learning — is a sound approach when tackling the issue of school safety.

Steve Turckes, FAIA, ALEP, LEED AP, is the Global Practice Leader of the K-12 Educational Facilities Group of Perkins+Will, an international award-winning architectural firm specializing in the research-based planning and design of innovative and sustainable educational facilities. In Steve’s 30-year career his work has focused on the programming, master planning and implementation of over $2B award-winning K-12 projects across the nation and abroad. 

Phil Santore has over 39 years of experience in consulting and design engineering for numerous educational, cultural/historical, residential, commercial, and federal and high risk facilities. Phil was the Principal in Charge for the New Sandy Hook School as well as all five towers at the World Trade Center. He possesses extensive experience and knowledge in Threat and Risk Assessments and Security Program Development. Phil provides specialized security technology assessment, recommendations, and engineering strategies for all projects.

Rachael Dumas is the Research Knowledge Manager for Perkins+Will’s K-12 Education practice.  She holds a Master in Architectural Preservation from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Bachelor in Consumer Communications from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is also an avid reader and lifelong learner, in addition to an explorer of the world’s cultural offerings.

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.