Imagine contemporary learning spaces that challenge every convention of the places we built as high schools in the twentieth century.
Imagine gathering spaces that encourage teens to work and play together in natural learning communities supported by teachers who create pathways that guide them towards adulthood.
Imagine media spaces that afford young people opportunities to search, connect, communicate and make using all the technologies available in the robust global communication network that exists today.
Imagine a merger of transparent natural and built environments that allow learners the delight of multi-sensory inputs through access to natural light, fresh air, and green space.
Imagine a continuum of flexible spaces designed to create an atmosphere of choice and comfort as students pursue their interests and passions through trans-disciplinary learning project work that fosters collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and communication.
Now imagine unleashing the potential to learn in spaces where the literal and figurative walls of school have come down between teens and teachers who serve them. In such spaces, the dominant teaching wall, desks in rows, print texts, and digital worksheets have disappeared, replaced by thriving, active communities of learners who use a variety of tools to produce more and consume less. Rather than content, the context of experiences drives learning.
High school spaces must provide pathways to educating young people today for their adult world of tomorrow. In a workforce that will be dominated by ever more sophisticated smart machines, our young people need experiences that will teach them how to learn in response to a changing world more than just what to learn in response to a teacher. With that end in mind, the built environment matters as we design for learning. Our re-imagination of space is essential to our re-imagination of curricula, assessment, and pedagogy.
In such high schools, students develop a sense of individual agency by design. They seek and find experts and expertise through personal learning networks. They create their own content and share it with audiences in the room as well as across the globe. Their voices matter and their influence makes a difference in their schools and their communities. Through their interactions with teachers, they grow and develop competencies essential to success as lifelong learners, family and community members, citizens, and members of an evolving workforce. They are capable of learning anywhere, anytime in any space — inside or outside of a dedicated high school facility.
In our district, we’ve developed design imperatives for learning that drive school modernization, renovations, and new construction. Media spaces have been at the center of our design work as we’ve re-imagined libraries as learning commons. In commons spaces, young people are makers who can be found designing and sewing conductive wearable art clothing, 3-D printing assistive tech tools for handicapped peers, writing, recording and performing original music for upload to iTunes, scripting and producing documentary and music videos for Youtube, searching and researching to find expertise and experts across the globe, or curled up on soft seating with a good book.
Our multi-age spaces support natural learning communities whose members engage in peer-to-peer project work to construct learning formally and informally. Using curricula that integrates context-determined learning infused with essential knowledge and pedagogies that purposefully engage learners, we find our teachers more and more focused on creating authentic experiences that activate learners to pursue interests and passions of their own.
For example, in a collaborative high school space that once was four rooms but with a deconstruction of dividing walls now is two, a four-teacher team collaboratively works with 65 at-risk ninth graders in a project-based learning model. I walked in one day to find students discussing the book Peak while in another room and in hallways outside the rooms, students worked collaboratively to create 3-D amusement parks. The unifying principle was grounded in development of algebraic conceptual understanding of slope-intercept as it applies in real world settings — application of the 4Cs across curricula. These spaces contain multi-level options for teens to sit or stand, work independently or collaboratively, use electrical drills or mobile devices, watch a streaming video, or chat in seminar discussions. The key design imperative is active learning supported by choice and comfort as teens orient in flexible spaces.
Choice and comfort plays out in not just in learning commons and classrooms but also in hallways. In our high schools, we are re-imagining areas once filled with lockers as opportunities for students to work “ in caves, around campfires, and at watering holes.” As lockers are removed from our schools, we replace the vacant space with seating options, charging stations, and white design walls. When walking our high schools, I see students seated, headphones on, working alone gathered in small project groups or connecting socially with peers moving through halls. One recent visitor commented, “ these teens are learning how to navigate college, the workforce, and the community through the empowered freedom afforded them in your schools.”
After all, shouldn’t we educate learners for life, not just for school?
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