When I begin a space design project for a school, my initial work focuses on understanding what the school wants its daily educational experience to be. Understanding their focus and what they do to achieve this forms the foundation for the spatial design process. The logic is that if you want to create spaces that serve the school, you must first understand who they are and what they want to accomplish with kids and then create the necessary spaces that support their work.
Part of the design process also focuses on inquiring about any future direction and big picture initiatives that may shift the current expectations for the school experience.
Both are essential to understand when designing a future condition for their learning spaces.
You might think that these two things would be relatively easy to define. Schools are in the business of providing experiences for students, right? It’s what they do. Yet when I ask school administrators and teachers about this, I generally get a blank stare. Some will hand me a copy of their curriculum guide, some will hand me a mission and vision statement they found somewhere, some might even talk to me about their vision for a graduate. Nope, I’m not looking for you to tell me what courses the schools teach or that you want them to be independent learners capable of a productive life. And I understand that you are preparing them for college and careers - who isn’t? I need this: What do kids do on a daily basis? What do they experience as learners? What skills and dispositions are they building that will help them negotiate an unknown future and a world in perpetual beta? And, what do they experience as human beings that will make them better human beings?
Given the pandemic, it’s even more difficult for them to define a future condition for the school experience, 5 to 10 years into the future.
So where have I landed with this?
I still spend time with my clients to understand them and their school. That will never change. I still spend time trying to understand the student experience they offer.
I don’t focus on the five-year/ten-year “where will you be” question. They’re not sure of next week.
I also don’t ask about innovative practice anymore because no one really knows what that is. I also don’t ask admins or teachers about the need for change. Doing so suggests that there must be a need for change and that they have to move away from something they are doing because it might not be effective, which indeed could be the case. The concept of change is rarely seen in a positive light by educators and there are a number of reasons for this, all for another blog post. That generally amounts to an instant roadblock.
So what is my focus, realizing my goal is to have a productive experience that moves them forward?
I believe that most, if not all schools, are simply interested in the improvement and advancement of their current educational experience, whatever that might be. They want to get better at what they currently do even though it is a challenge to articulate exactly what that is. Along the way there's room for improvement and perhaps some new innovative practice that might contribute to some shifts. Perhaps this is enough, but perhaps it isn’t - it depends greatly on the school. But proceeding in this way is less threatening than asking about change and where they will be in five or ten years and gives me a fighting chance to help them design environments that can meet their needs whenever those needs emerge for them as they progress along their journey.
I’m somewhat conflicted with this. I do consider it my responsibility to ask and to challenge them to clarify and declare their intent about what they believe. It’s not my role as a designer to place or force my value system relative to education upon them. But here is what I believe.
In my opinion, and in a perfect world, a school would have a united focus that would apply to the daily experience of school, such as personalized or competency-based learning that they might be working toward together. Or perhaps the entire school might be moving toward a design thinking-based pedagogical approach. Maybe they’re focused on becoming more inclusive and equitable. Or pick any one of the myriads of options available to education. In my experience, it is rare that schools have a long-term united focus on what constitutes their daily experience. It seems that the daily experience, something that could and should have a school-wide focus, is the responsibility of each individual classroom teacher.
But this is certainly far from a perfect world, and schools are in a tough spot now and will continue to be for a long time. It’s not my role as a designer to place my values about education on my clients. Understanding that a group of people want to get better at what they do, and that improvement can emerge over time, and might do so serendipitously, is good enough for now.
Banner photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash