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Okinawa International School Learning Environment Enhancement (Proposal/ Further Research on its Impact )

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Okinawa International School Learning Environment Enhancement (Proposal/ Further Research on its Impact )

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- Survey with stakeholders
- Effects on students' behavior and
learning

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Futuristic view of learners 2020

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DesignShare: "Creating a 2020 Vision for School Design"

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I ask teachers, "Are you ever going to be 18 again? Are your students ever going to be your age? Should we be preparing students for the world as it was when we were 18, or for the world as it will be when they are our age?"

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Audio clip for reflection of our learning environment

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Audio clip for reflection of our learning environment

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Are there similarities and differences in our classes?

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It's a perennial debate in American education: Do kids learn best when they're sitting in rows at their desks? Or moving around, exploring on their own?

Back in the 1960s and '70s, that debate led to a brand new school design: Small classrooms were out. Wide-open spaces were in. The Open Education movement was born.

Across the U.S., schools were designed and built along these new ideas, with a new approach to the learning that would take place inside them.

It was a response, historians say, to fears that the U.S. was falling behind in key subjects like science and math. The approach "resonated with those who believed that America's formal, teacher-led classrooms were crushing students' creativity," Larry Cuban, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, wrote in 2004.

"No whole-class lessons, no standardized tests, and no detailed curriculum," he wrote. "The best of the open classrooms had planned settings where children came in contact with things, books, and one another at 'interest centers' and learned at their own pace with the help of the teacher."

Sounds great, right? But within just a few years - by the late 1970s - the open schools movement had faded. A backlash set in. "Traditional schools sprang up in suburbs and cities," Cuban wrote. "This time the call was not for open education but for a return to the basics."

Of course many open schools remained in operation long after that. I remember visiting one in Detroit in the 1990s, when I was a student teacher. By then, open schools were already an endangered species: education's equivalent of a red-cockaded woodpecker. Or a Ford Pinto.

So, what happened?

Recently, I ran across another survivor just a few miles from NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C. What better place to explore this mystery than a visit to Benjamin Orr Elementary School?

I asked the principal, Carolyn Jackson-King, what she thought the philosophy behind this model was back in 1974 when the school was built. "I think it was mainly for collaboration for teachers," she explained. "A lot of times, teachers are in their silos, by ourselves, doing our own thing."

The openness allowed them to work together and students too: "If I'm a first-grader doing second-grade work," Jackson-King says, "I could easily go over to that second-grade classroom and work."

To see all this in action, Jackson-King hands us off to an educator who knows this building inside and out: Marlon Ray, Orr Elementary's director of strategy and logistics. He takes us upstairs.

"Here we have three first-grade classrooms, in one huge space," Ray says. At one end of a long, vast room - maybe 30 yards from end to end - Dyanna Gardner's class is working on a poem and song about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"D! R! E-A-M!" they sing.

"We have to work out these kinks," Gardner tells her students. "You have to practice this like 20 times tonight."

About halfway down this space, a second class - Marquitta Johnson's - is having a silent-reading exercise. But when we stop to watch, I notice that you can still hear the other class singing off in the distance.

Marlon Ray takes us upstairs again, where we meet some second-graders. They're working on writing sentences.

"Same concept," he explains. "Same layout." Three classes, one big space.

And this is about the point where I'm starting to notice something about this "open" school.

"You know what I don't see?" I ask him. "A lot of 'openness.' "

Marlon Ray laughs. Everywhere you look, there are partitions, bulletin boards on wheels, crates stacked up high. "Metal cabinets," Ray says, "bookshelves, hanging, dangling things."

And so, I ask Marlon, here in this school without walls, they've created ... "Walls," he finishes.

Tomiko Ball has taught for nine years in the D.C. public schools, but this is her first in this building. I ask her what she thinks about it:

"Oh, boy!" she says. "It's a bit difficult at times." Ball says she came to this building "because of the principal" - the chance to work for Jackson-King. She loves the students and the other teachers, too.

But the open floor plan? She can't get used to the noise. Every teacher has a different noise level, Ball says, and that takes a lot of adjustment. "This is my noise level, this is another noise level."

Teaching here, she adds, takes a special mindset: "You have to put it in your psyche to say, 'I'm going to make this work, I'm going to do the best with what I have.' "

Historians say that's pretty much why this open school design died out. Bottom line: Too loud. Too distracting. Teachers hated it.

The open school model tried to tear down the walls and barriers, and for 40 years teachers at this school have been putting them back up.

Chalk it up to another education fad that came and went.

There's more to all this of course. Larry Cuban notes that it wasn't just that teachers didn't like it. Societal and cultural factors intervened, too. "In the mid-1970s," he writes, "with the economy stagnating and the nation deeply divided over the Vietnam War, critics again trained their sights on the public schools." Now, concerns were that standards had slipped, that schools were too free and open. A "back-to-basics" mood set in.

At schools like Orr Elementary, teachers and students learned to adapt.

"It's all I know," says Julie Morgan, Orr's instructional coach, who's been teaching here for 24 years. Morgan says the model does lead to collaboration. "We communicate well, we're a close-knit staff. I attribute that to the openness."

Like it or not, this building is facing extinction - they're going to tear it down this year and build a new one next door. And across the city the vestiges of the Open Schools era are disappearing. Here's how the DC schools website puts it, "Open space is a challenging educational environment for today's teachers and students and DCPS is in the process of enclosing or replacing all of these schools."

At Orr, the educators are ready - not just for the learning space, but simply to have modern heating and cooling and all the other conveniences a new building will bring.

And while the movement itself may have crashed, many of the concepts and ideas behind Open Education remain - they're a big part of what lots of schools around the country are trying to do: Collaboration. Independent, student-centered learning. Exploration.

And here at Orr, when they get that new building? Those things aren't going away, either. "The openness is in the room, the collaboration still exists," Tomiko Ball says. "Whether there's walls and doors or not."

Ball says open education isn't so much about the floor plan, but the way teachers work together and work with their students.

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'Open Schools' Made Noise In The '70s; Now They're Just Noisy

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'Open Education' was a big idea half a century ago. Kids were supposed to move around, learning in groups or exploring on their own. But, within a few years, the movement faded. So, what happened?

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To be employed at a school with newly designed facilities is uncommon. Most educators inherit a teaching space that is relatively fixed and is likely to be a manifestation of an educational experience whose time has passed.

Upon moving into a new learning space, we are greeted by the previous occupant's ghost. We may struggle to decipher the furniture that was left in the room, understand the pros and cons of the layout, and get to know the quirks and individuality of the floor plan. It takes us time to understand a new space, to settle in, and to begin to make judicious alterations to the environment. Educators spend countless hours, and even their own money, tinkering to get their classrooms "just right". We should be looking to coordinate these isolated, yet well-intentioned efforts to maximize the potential of our learning environments.

A collaborative learning space enhancement process reimagines space in progressive, modern ways; and without building a new campus.
Put Pedagogy at the Heart of Your Collaborative Redesign
The learning space enhancement process is structured by a number of important driving considerations, primarily; being grounded in pedagogy. The use of teacher committees, working towards shared outcomes or to further the goals of the school, is nothing new in education. However when the collaboration of the committee is empowered by a focus on pedagogy, meaningful organizational shift is within reach.
Focus on Progressive Pedagogy to Drive Change Decisions
Educators are time-poor, and as a result, planning for learning spaces can become haphazard, reactive and underwhelming. Budget allocations and purchase deadlines are rarely conducive to thoughtful deliberations about how to strategically "amplify learning" (Hare & Dillon, 2016).

Anyone can put people in a room with a purchase order form and a catalogue. The challenge is to redirect committees from a brainstorming/shopping mentality to a deeper conversation about learning and teaching. It is vital that we look to rebuild spaces from a place of purpose and intention, rather than personal desire. It's about coming together as visionary co-designers rather than reactive shoppers.

From What to Why
We need to be mindful of when we are working from the what and to move quickly beyond it. Working from the what sounds like:

"What shall we order?"

"I need this" - "We want that" - "My old school had one of those" .

The inevitable answer to what includes lists of items to be sourced and objects to obtained. It may seem exciting to receive new teaching tools, but when the tools lack authentic context they will be divorced from why and remain uninspiring. Focusing on why, via the question: " why we are redesigning our learning spaces?" will result in a richer dialogue and a more purposeful committee. When why is co-constructed within the learning space enhancement process you are starting from a position of deep reflection that will pay off handsomely. To support the development of the why, your working group should produce documentation that includes a clear rationale for every item they seek to introduce into your space, and for every item you seek to remove.

Set your committee up for success by co-constructing understanding about the the changes that are being sought . As the rationale for change becomes well thought out, stronger levels of buy-in from stakeholders develop. It is hard to argue with such quality thinking, and thus makes it difficult for institutions to backpedal to the status quo.

A comprehensive learning space enhancement process, guided by a deep consideration of pedagogy and within a collaborative structure, is about transforming our existing spaces into progressive, equitable, engaging environments for our learners.

It is about moving from individual nests to learning hives, and is a process that can be intentionally managed to provide maximum outcomes for learning communities.

Hare, R & Dillon, R, The Space: A Guide for Educators, 2016, EdTechTeam Press, Irvine

Visit Robert L. Peter's website, here

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To be employed at a school with newly designed facilities is uncommon. Most educators inherit a teaching space that is relatively fixed and is likely to be a manifestation of an educational experience whose time has passed. Upon moving into a new learning space, we are greeted by the previous occupant's ghost.

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Grade1 Classroom

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Front of Grade3 Classroom

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Back of Grade3 Classroom

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Building Excellence: Exploring the implications of the Curriculum for Excellence for School Buildings

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Publication which captures the main messages from the Building Excellence programme

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Considerations for lighting, colors, and learning

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DesignShare: Learning, Lighting and Color

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DesignShare publications are submitted by designers, university professors, architects, planning consultants, educators, technologists, futurists, and ecologists. Publications include podcasts, detailed case studies, conference proceedings, interviews, original research, editorials, thesis projects, and practical design guidelines.

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Kindargargden Classroom

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Comments, suggestions for corner enhancement