Architecting a better school

We’re pleased to share this guest contribution from Tim Derrington, AIA + LEED AP. Tim is founder of Derrington Building Studio, a full-service architecture practice in Austin that focuses on relationship-based design, working closely with clients to deliver practical buildings that don’t sacrifice great design.  

Parents considering enrolling their kids in an alternative school tend to look into things like teaching philosophy, location, cost, classroom quality, educational achievements, and specialty programs when evaluating which one is best for their children. While all of those things matter a great deal, what if I told you that the built environment is among the most critical components to your child’s education and well-being?

The success or failure of children’s learning environment influences everything from how engaged they are in the classroom to their level of focus when learning new skills to even their performance. Environment sets the tone for our learning and future growth.

It is surprising, then, to find that most schools in the United States are made up of outdated facilities and failing infrastructure that do not meet modern-day health, safety, and educational standards. Not to mention the often uninspired facilities and dismal portable classrooms that many of our funding-deprived, overcrowded schools find themselves made of today.

So how can we change the state of our schools from designs that are outdated to designs that adapt to meet the needs of modern-day education?
 

The Case for a New Kind of School Architecture

I am an architect, and a few years ago I had the opportunity to design an addition to the Khabele Elementary School campus. It was my first time designing a school and an exciting project for me as an up-and-coming architect in Austin.

Immediately upon getting the project, I started researching precedents, pedagogies, building technology, and many other factors that might influence the seemingly infinite possibilities when it comes to designing a school. I explored the work and teachings of some of our greatest educational thinkers, both old and new—people like Maria Montessori, Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel, and Sir Ken Robinson. I studied buildings that seemed to push the envelope on what a school could be. There were so many ideas and perspectives on what makes a great environment for learning, yet so many failed school designs in existence.

Ultimately, I asked myself how architecture could affect a child’s learning potential and behavior. These were the factors I found to be most important and what I personally recommend every parent and educator consider when evaluating schools.
 

Flexible, Learner-Friendly Spaces

There are few things I can think of that are more limiting to a young mind than predictable, unstimulating environments. There are so many buildings that succumb to the constraints of budgets and building codes and forego the opportunity to imagine wonderful spaces—in particular, spaces that encourage kids to explore, dream, observe and reflect. This happens more often than not and is a condition my team and I strive to change in our day-to-day practice as architects.

What I have learned is that the most successful environments, especially those that focus on learning, offer flexibility and support a diverse set of activities and needs. Schools that have classrooms that can provide for everything from larger group discussions to small-group learning opportunities or individual creative exercises tend to win out and offer the best functionality.

Why?

A more flexible space doesn’t limit the child to one environment. This may seem obvious, but many of our schools today fail to provide flexible learning environments for their students. Students need options and the ability to choose what space they learn best in, which in turn helps increase their level of engagement and learning potential.

Want to provide a focused lesson to a group of 10 students? Need to perform individualized creative projects? Those scenarios call for very different spaces but are nearly always done in the same classroom.

When all of the parts and pieces of a classroom can be easily adjusted to meet the needs of the day, the space comes to life with unique characteristics that make up a better-functioning and diverse space to learn, wonder, and create.
 

Learning That Spans Both Indoors and Outdoors

Among other things, architecture is about striking a balance between providing shelter from the elements and encouraging connection to your environment. This balance has been found to be especially powerful as a learning tool, bringing people closer to nature as an educational space.

In the case of the Khabele school, a visible relationship to nature was especially important. All of the rooms have large windows that offer plenty of natural light and views of trees and the surrounding forest.

Lighting is the most important environmental input after food and water for controlling bodily functions and behavior. For this reason, optimizing natural lighting was a key aspect of the Khabele school design and should be a top priority in any new school development.

In our research, we found that full-spectrum natural lighting not only helps reduce energy consumption but also determines the body’s output of vitamin D, a critical component to a child’s health and development. It has even been found to raise students’ grade point averages and make children less “hyper.”

Beyond just the lighting, we found that windows overlooking the outdoors were crucial.

Outdoor learning environments are becoming more and more popular as a means of involving students in the study of ecology and greener environments. Integrating school structures with natural quiet areas as well as play areas is also very important. We wanted to encourage that connection by providing lines of sight to the trees and play areas outside the classrooms.

My team and I made a conscious decision to showcase beautiful natural material, including stone and wood, to mimic the existing building on campus while also blending in with the surrounding Texas hill country. The importance of infusing a child’s physical setting with a direct, physical connection to nature cannot be overstated.
 

Fostering Environments That Are Welcoming

The main entrance is the first thing every child sees when arriving at school. This entrance has the opportunity to be welcoming and approachable, or unfriendly and withdrawn.

I’d bet you that any parent and their child would want their school to look welcoming, for obvious reasons. A school should be a friendly place that encourages learning. Welcoming entrances also serve the role of orienting children as they move throughout the school’s campus, serving as a visible pillar of the school and giving it a sense of community.

Although Khabele already had a building on this campus, we considered how our addition to the school could serve to better welcome and orient students.

A wooden deck served as the main pathway to the new classrooms, signaling to students and teachers alike that they should enter the space.

The deck was made extra wide so that it could easily accommodate clusters of students moving back-and-forth from class while also being a visible point of reference for students and visitors.
 

Looking Forward: The Future of School Design

Designing the next generation of schools requires having an open-table discussion among students, educators, parents, and architects. With limited research in this area, it is up to us to determine what elements of a school design work best and what needs to be refined in order to create schools that support the growth and development of future generations. Through these collaborations, we can stop letting poorly designed schools limit great teaching moments and take their toll on student learning.

Most importantly, we can ensure that our schools’ philosophies are better reflected and supported by the environments in which they are taught while also encouraging a greater appreciation for the built environment.

Tim Derrington
 

Media Monday: Where do the presidential candidates stand on education?

The 74 Million’s presidential election coverage includes news, analysis, and opinion on the education policies of candidates from both major parties.

We’ve noticed over the past few weeks that education policy is not getting much coverage by traditional media sources in the noise of the presidential campaign, so we went looking for some solid information comparing the candidates’ positions on a range of education issues, from pre-k to college. Here’s what we found. Please let us know if there are other sources you recommend!

One of the most interesting sites we discovered is called The 74 Million, named for the number of school-age kids in the country whose needs ought to be on our minds as we vote this year. It covers a broad spectrum of education issues, looks fresh, is easy to navigate, and adds new content regularly. There are opinion pieces from a variety of viewpoints as well as features on school-related topics, including reporting on SWSXedu here in Austin. But for our purposes, the section on Election 2016 is of interest for its coverage of what the candidates are saying and not saying about education. For a quick hit of information, the Election Scorecard details candidates’ stands on six key issues.

A “just the facts” site, Ballotpedia.org’s education page does a good job of rounding up presidential hopefuls’ statements on a broad range of topics and laying them out in one handy, clickable spot to make them easy to compare and contrast.

And if it’s higher education policy that’s of interest to you, take a look at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators explanations of that hot election-year issue.

Shelley Sperry

Media Monday: Teaching “no to violence”

For Media Monday this week, we’re looking beyond borders and joining the international community in saluting a great teacher who works in some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable.

Some children may not directly experience things like arrests, or assault, checkpoints, and all the violence in our country, however they see it on the screens and in social media and that will affect them. . . . When I say no to violence, I pass it on to the students without them noticing it, through behaviors and ethics that I teach the students through playing games.

—Hanan Al Hroub, Global Teacher of the Year, 2016

In case you missed it, an innovative Palestinian teacher from Bethlehem who grew up in a refugee camp and now teaches refugee kids, was selected as Global Teacher of the Year yesterday. None other than Pope Francis announced the honor for Hanan al-Hroub, who believes in nonviolence and the power of play. Al Hroub explains her philosophy and her battle against violence in a YouTube video that’s a must-see:
 

 Shelley Sperry

Joy is the bottom line: Entrepreneurial education in Austin

Young entrepreneurs at the annual Acton Children’s Business Fair

Shelley Sperry is a staff writer at Alt Ed Austin. An entrepreneur in her own right, she also works as a writer, researcher, and editor at Sperry Editorial.

When you hear the term “entrepreneurial education,” you may first think about old-school extracurricular clubs that teach kids through hands-on projects—programs such as Junior Achievement and 4-H, or even the annual ritual of Girl Scout cookie sales. What I’ve learned by investigating schools in Austin is that entrepreneurial education is a big-tent concept that includes a diverse mix of well-established and brand-new ventures. Some find the label limiting, but it’s useful for identifying schools that share a few core similarities:

• An emphasis on projects in which kids make, market, and sell products that link them to customers and the community outside the school
• A holistic approach that integrates mind, body, and spirit in the learning process
• Elimination of separate, “siloed” subjects (math, science, language arts, social studies) in favor of integrated learning of all content via entrepreneurial projects
• Use of approaches from the start-up business world to structure groups, projects, and timelines
• De-emphasis on teachers and direct instruction in favor of mentors and guides who help students make their own decisions
• An interest in building kids’ sense of themselves and their work as tools for making the world a better place

Austin programs that fall into this big tent include Acton Academy, Kọ School + Incubator, Sansori High School @ Whole Life Learning Center, and WonderLab.

When I interviewed Jeff Sandefer of the well-established Acton Academy and Kristin Kim of Sansori High School, which will be opening to its first class in August this year, I was struck by the fact that both approaches emphasize the importance of each student’s personal journey toward self-confidence and self-knowledge. This is something I normally would associate with twenty-somethings rather than kids in elementary, middle, and high school, but it demonstrates an essential part of the entrepreneurial education philosophy. Kids are respected as capable, contributing members of the community, even as six- or seven-year-olds.
 

Acton Academy’s approach is built around the notion of the “hero’s journey” usually associated with classic literature. Sandefer argues that each Acton student should understand himself or herself as on a life quest, rather than merely acquiring a set of skills or facts.

A student-led discussion at Acton Academy

“It’s more about learning to persevere, to fail and get back up, to treat people with kindness, and to listen before talking,” he explains. “We start with kids as early as six and go all the way through high school, cultivating these traits. They earn more and more freedom as they get older. They learn that the better you treat people, the harder you work, the more freedom you have.”

Acton’s Children’s Business Fair is the biggest such gathering in the country and has become a major community event in Austin each fall. The fair hosts more than 100 booths and brings together students not only from Acton’s elementary, middle, and high schools, but also from across a spectrum of Austin schools and homeschooling environments who want to create products or services and market them to customers while learning business, academic, and life skills.

With Sandefer’s blessing, other educators are creating schools based on the Acton model in other parts of Central Texas, throughout the United States, and beyond. The first graduate of Acton Academy Guatemala was recently accepted into the University of California at Berkeley with a triple major in math, biology, and biosciences.
 

Along with local and national business leaders who support the Kọ School, founders Michael Strong and Khotso Khabele believe that all people in the world should be able to live their lives creatively and productively. In other words, everyone should have the opportunity to behave like entrepreneurs: innovating and adding value to society. They believe that happiness comes from challenging work in which individuals create something meaningful, and they argue that the best path to this kind of life is through a Socratic method of questioning and learning how to teach oneself. The Kọ School + Incubator is designed to “blur the boundary between school and the outside world.”
 

WonderLab describes itself as a true incubator and is less a full-time school than a gathering place that puts like-minded, entrepreneurial kids together to help each other.  Students identify their own goals and the resources and skills they need to reach those goals, and then they form teams that are assisted by an adult guide. Team members support each other and work together for a few hours each week. But even in this very practical world of achieving specific project goals, the overarching philosophy is that kids will end up exploring and defining themselves. They will be “on the path to figuring out the intersection of their gifts, their passions, and what the world needs.”
 

An image from the Sansori High School website that expresses one of the central principles of the program

Kristin Kim, who is bringing her Sansori educational philosophy to Austin this year in partnership with the Whole Life Learning Center, puts holistic learning at the center. “I give talks at colleges in the U.S. and U.K., and I hear that the students in their twenties don’t know what to do with their lives and are searching. We can offer children a different way of learning so that one benefit is getting a clear sense of what they love and how they can apply it in the world. They leave high school with skills and with self-knowledge.”

Kim says that confidence and joy are the hallmarks of her approach. A sense of integration of the individual and the world outside the classroom seems to be crucial too. By way of example, Kim describes students who made beeswax candles for sale, which seems like a simple learning-about-business project, but became something much grander in its implications. Students learned important lessons in science, math, and language arts as they made and marketed the candles. “We also connected their activities with how the universe works through the structure of polymers and the ecology of bees, and connected it with their own physical bodies in terms of other cultures’ understanding of the medicinal value of honey.”

I still think the word “entrepreneurial” works to describe these diverse Austin schools, because each does develop in students a taste for creating and innovating, whether in business, science, the arts, or other pursuits. But I would also say that a “whole child” focus that brings a spiritual element to the table is just as important, and something I hadn’t expected.

As Kim says,  “What we’re doing is allowing students of all ages to experience learning not just through their brains or minds, but through their bodies and hearts. They then see themselves differently and understand the co-creative role of each human being. When you get a deep understanding of the unity between inner and outer worlds, joy is a natural consequence.”

Shelley Sperry

One good question with Mike DeGraff

An iconic scene from the award-winning film Most Likely to Succeed

We’re pleased to reproduce here an interview with Mike DeGraff from Rhonda Broussard’s excellent blog One Good Question. Reading Mike’s thoughts on maker education will help prepare you for the mind- blowing, award-winning film Most Likely to Succeed, which you can view and discuss with Mike and others Tuesday, March 8, at 6pm at the North Door. Read more about the film and event at the end of the interview.
 

Michael DeGraff is the Instructional Program Coordinator at the UTeach Institute. His work includes coordinating the Instruction Program Review process for all UTeach Partner Sites as well as supporting instructors to implement the nine UTeach courses. Michael has been a part of UTeach since 2001, first as an undergraduate student at UT Austin (BA Mathematics with Secondary Teaching Option, 2005), then as a graduate student (MA Mathematics Education, 2007), and finally as a Master Teacher with UKanTeach at the University of Kansas. He was also instrumental in launching Austin Maker Education.

In what ways do our investments in education reveal our beliefs about the next generation’s role in the world?

There was a call for 100,000 STEM teachers in the US, and since then there have been tons of initiatives, and related funding, to respond to the need (some say too much). UTEACH is a very constructivist- oriented teacher education program for STEM teachers that began at UT Austin and has spread across the country. Then we saw the launch of Maker Faire™ to showcase STEAM design in informal learning space. When I went to my first faire 3-4 years ago, I was amazed at how well it fit into what I understood about constructivist education.  I was also amazed that there wasn’t tighter articulation between schools, teacher education programs, and what’s going on in this sector.

In schools, "making" is mostly robotics, especially at the secondary level. School libraries may have makerspaces that are more diverse, but there’s very little happening in teacher preparation for how we prepare teachers for these spaces that are proliferating. No two people have the same vision for what you mean when you say makerspace. Whenever you talk about this, it’s so easy to get excited about the 3D printer, laser cutter and other specific tools. At UTeach, we’re more interested in how it transforms what kids are able to do and how teachers are empowered to teach differently. Not to dismiss the tools, but ultimately, what’s so exciting about all of this stuff is how it connects to this lineage of progressive education dating back to Dewey and meaningful, authentic, relevant work. That’s what’s so powerful to me about this whole maker movement. It really champions student voice in a way that I don’t see in any other movement/innovation/fad. How can we replicate that for every kid? One of the biggest hurdles in education and industry is to get kids curious. Makerspaces can get them to a point where they can start wondering.

The maker world and project-based formal education don’t seem to respect each other enough. The maker world is super auto-didactic, self-sufficient, DIY, vibrant, and very curious. The maker world sentiment is that schools are going to destroy the maker movement by embracing it and standardizing it. It’s not an unfounded fear. Look at the computer labs in the 90s. The way that education works is in compartmentalizing. My biggest fear is that it becomes a space where you go and do « making » for an hour completely separated from (or only superficially connected to) science, math, language arts, literature, art, etc.

The formal education world is coming from a perspective that we’ve been doing « making » well before Maker Faire started in 2006, but have called it other things like project-based instruction. Colleges of Education see the value in makerspaces, but in public education we have to focus on serving every kid.

While the Maker Education Initiative motto is « every kid a maker » colleges of education and educators in general are asking what do we do with kids who aren’t motivated by blinking a light or don’t identify with the notion of making? How does PD play out in these different areas, and what does it look like as these spaces develop?
 

Do you think that schools/universities would be adopting makerspaces if they weren’t tied to funding?

These spaces have always existed in universities, but they used to be highly articulated with coursework.

« Making » in a university is usually housed in the college of engineering, which makes sense for digital fabrication and electronics. You were typically a junior before you got to that level of coursework and only accessed the equipment for specific, course related projects. If you talk to industry, a big complaint is that universities are producing engineering graduates who can calculate, but can’t use a screwdriver and a hammer or connect that academic experience to the real world.

A makerspace is more similar to a library type model so it’s open and you can go in and make when/what you want. UT opened a Longhorn Maker Studio and when I went there in November it was full of kids making Christmas presents (like ornaments, a picture frame, and other highly personal artifacts). There are a lot of class projects, but it’s more about figuring out what they can do with it.  That’s what’s exciting.

Something that I see as very similar to the makerspace idea in the College of Science is open inquiry where students choose what they want to learn more about, design an experiment, and analyze results. In UTeach, one of the nine courses is totally dedicated to this process. Instructors have noticed that the hardest part of the process is to get students to become curious. Get students to develop their own questions that can be addressed by experiments. In education, we have identified content, but the gap is how we inspire students to be curious and engaged and motivated and passionate. It’s so well connected in general to how we get students to think and be self-motivated and have internal drive.
 

One could argue that makerspaces are going the way of MOOCs—only reinforcing the privilege and access of middle-class paradigms and still largely unused in lower-income/marginalized communities. If we really believe that makerspaces improve creativity, critical thinking, and STEM, what will it take for the movement to reach a more diverse audience?

Why I see maker movement as being fundamentally different, is that I see it as hitting on different things, namely on student motivation and constructivist education, with what we know about how students learn best, project-based instruction, and the evolution of progressive education. At the UTeach conference last May, we had several sessions about making in the classroom. It’s important for us is to embed this into regular coursework. Right now, a lot of the robotics and electives are afterschool activities, but in order for this to be truly democratized, we have to make it part of our classes—science and math that every kid takes.  NGSS and CCSS math standards demonstrate value for persistent problem solvers, design cycle, and implementing inquiry. Makerspaces can support these standards for all students.

As part of the maker strand at our UTeach conference Leah Buechley gave the plenary talk contrasting mainstream maker approaches with tools and techniques designed to support diversity and equality.” This is exactly why we, in education, need to systematically develop opportunities around « making » for a more diverse population, which early indications show is working. We’re already seeing that the demographics of youth serving maker spaces are much more diverse than that of Maker Faire.

Mike’s One Good Question: How can we use this space to address community needs? What we’re doing is making things, but why are we making them?
 

Here’s a special invitation from Mike to join him and other education thinkers and doers for a special screening of Most Likely to Succeed:
 

Please join us on Tuesday, March 8th, to discuss our schools, what we want them to look like, and how we can work together to meet the changing needs of our global society. Doors open at 5:30pm, special guest ¡Oh Antonio + His Imaginary Friends! will play from 6:00 to 6:30pm, and the movie starts at 6:45pm followed by a discussion and Q&A. Since the movie is about innovation in education, we are excited to be able to help Travis High School in developing its own makerspace and innovation. All proceeds from the screening will go directly to support providing resources for the space and teacher training related to those tools. Reserve your ticket here.

About the movie: For most of the last century, entry-level jobs were plentiful, and college was an affordable path to a fulfilling career. That world no longer exists. The feature-length documentary Most Likely to Succeed examines the history of education, revealing the growing shortcomings of our school model in todayʼs innovative world. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Greg Whiteley, the film has been named “among the best edu-documentaries ever produced” by Education Week.
See more at http://mltsfilm.org.

Making mud

Meghan Fitzgerald is founder and chief learning officer at Tinkergarten, which began in New York and is now expanding to other communities—including Austin!—to offer outdoor early childhood education classes for children and their parents. We invited Meghan to join us on the blog to share her considerable mud-making expertise.
 

I must admit that, as a former principal and brand-new mom of an eight-month-old, I was a bit uncertain about making mud, and I certainly wasn’t thinking of it as a transformative experience. “Making mud? What’s the point?” I wondered. “Is it worth the mess?” This was before my forest school training and before I started to really spend time with tiny people outdoors.

It turns out the simple act of making mud is a universally powerful pastime for young people (and not bad for us big kids, either). Yes, kids get messy. (Fair warning: They may even try to taste the mud.) But with a few exceptions, kids get completely absorbed in this pursuit. The great news for parents is you can do this virtually anywhere—with the most basic of materials (water + dirt!). Armed with a few tips, parents can help unleash the activity’s rich learning potential. Play in the mud along with your kids, and you’ll inspire immediate smiles as well as a lifelong comfort, even pleasure, in mucking around. That kind freedom spawns unbridled creativity and joy that’s just plain good for the soul. So let them go for it—you can make an outdoor cleanup part of the fun too!

Here’s how we like to approach mud play:

1. Pack a few materials: Unless you’re near a water source, you’ll need to bring it with you. We like to have around half gallon of water per kid so they can play and experiment for a while. Bring a small pail or container for each child so she can pour water as desired without dumping your entire supply.
2. Clear your spot: If you’re in a high-traffic area, check to make sure that there are no obvious hazards (e.g., broken glass, metal, dog doo, trash) where you’ll be making your mud. As you scan the ground, grab some sticks that kids can use for stirring and mushing mud.
3. Pour a little water. Then let them do the pouring: Trickle a small amount of water on the ground, and discover together what happens to the dirt. You can take a stick and even do a little mixing. Then hand a bucket to your kids, inviting them to transport water and see what happens when they add it to dirt. Stand back, and watch them get to work.
4. Dole out the water as you go: Allow (or help) kids to fill up their pails or cups and dump water as often as they like. Playing with water is, in and of itself, a super engaging lesson in cause and effect and physics. We prefer filling a large container (e.g., 5-gallon bucket) and letting kids serve themselves.
5. Play and “ooooooh” alongside them: Let them continue to pour, mix, and make mud on their own, but do the same alongside them. Every now and again, “Ooooh” or “Ahhh” at the mud puddles, rivers, and piles you make. Ask kids if they notice a difference between their mud and yours, giving an opportunity to describe the different muds using words such as soupy, thick, chunky, dry, wet, or sticky. Such a gripping sensory experience is a great opportunity to build language.
6. Make something (optional): If you think they are ready for more, do not interrupt their play. Simply make a mud pie by forming a fistful of mud into a patty and plopping it down somewhere. Gather nature treasures to decorate it (our oldest loves to make pizza mud pies most). Kids will likely get intrigued by what you are doing and want to try it too. If you have older kids (ages 3+), you can make mud faces on the trees!

Why is this activity great for kids?

Playing and experimenting with ooey, gooey mud helps children to strengthen their sense of touch—and we know that the better kids are able to tune and integrate their senses, the more effectively they can learn. Once kids know how to make and manipulate mud, they have a tool for play and building with virtually unlimited uses. When kids transform the shape, texture, or nature of materials (in this case, turning dirt and water into mud), they also engage in a universal behavior pattern called the transforming schema, which supports brain development. Best of all, when you let kids lose themselves in play and give them room to mess around, you offer them the openness and freedom they’ll need to develop true creativity down the line. If all this isn’t compelling enough, research also indicates that playing in the dirt is just plain good for kids’ health. So go on, get dirty!

Meghan Fitzgerald