Teaching

The Mission and Vision as Invitation and Declaration

Does your school or school district have a mission and vision statement? Easy question, right? I’m guessing the answer is yes.

How important are they? Could you recite both? Are they used daily to direct, guide…

The Educator as Designer and Ethnographer

Teachers were once “sages on the stage.”

Then they became “guides on the side.”

Now they’re “facilitators.”

Coffeeshopping Your Classroom?

I see it all the time on Twitter. “You should <INSERT NAME OF FAMOUS COFFEE SHOP HERE> your classroom. Good idea? Or bad idea?

The real answer is that it depends. The focus on redesigning classrooms should be to create the spatial conditions that…

Getting Better at Creating Learning Spaces

So your school wants new learning spaces…

If that’s the case, what is your process? Because you need a process. Unfortunately, for many schools, this simply means implementing a new furniture solution. Most likely, that’s not…

The Importance of Listening

Great design begins by listening.

Listening allows a designer to understand the beliefs, the expectations, the perspectives and the biases that a group of people share. Asking the right questions and allowing the dialogue to take over provides the…

Getting Your Learning Spaces Ready for School

August is here and so is the start of school. That’s always a special time filled with a little bit of apprehension and a lot of excitement. That also means getting ready for your kids and the start of a great new year. This year, take some time to…

Educational Ping Pong

Back and forth the ball goes over the net. One player hits the ping pong ball, the other player returns it. Sometimes it leaves the table top as the result of a bad shot, only to be returned back to the table to start over. The game is confined to a distinct space, and the ball really…

The School Library as Change Agent

Perhaps the most valuable real estate in a school is it’s library. Here’s why:

How Big Are Your Ideas?

I’m fairly confident that the most important thing anyone can do to help educators improve what they do is to help…