While the first day of the CAE conference was busy, by Day Two we realized that our schedule was so full that breaks would be few if any. Everyone dove in, filling the day with a bus trip North to several communities outside of Seattle. We visited five sites and had four presentations, and I am only now, two days later, finally catching up enough to put together a summary. I think that if anything the fact that the conference left me so worn out at the end of each day is a sign of just how good it was.
Our first stop on Day 2 was in Lynnwood, WA, at Lynnwood High School. There we were greeted by Tom Vander Ark, who kicked us off with a presentation on the possibilities offered by digital learning technologies. Tom's background is in education policy, and one of the many things he does now is invest in innovative education startups. He argued that online learning was going to be an ever-increasing part of K-12 education, a change that is being helped along by the adoption of common standards by most states. These standards will likely be tested using affordable online testing methods. He discussed several different possible mixes of online and in-person educational delivery, and argued that while there are possibilities for many shortcomings, that the opportunities offered by this trend, such as individualized learning and more equal access to teaching for all students, are too compelling for us to dismiss. Architecturally the move to hybrid models of online and in-person instruction will radically change the school, and Tom predicted that it will be at least several decades before we reach a shared consensus about what a school should look like, if we ever reach that consensus again.
After Tom's hopeful but challenging presentation we set to touring three examples of this interrogation of contemporary school organization. We began with Lynnwood High (Bassetti Architects, 2009), a school defined by its Agora- a wide, double-height common space that serves as hall, eating space, social mixing space and more.
Students moving through Lynnwood High School's Agora.
Our guides timed our tour so that we would be in the Agora during passing period, and the energy and social buzz was palpable when the bell rang and students spilled out from the school's eight classroom clusters and gym and arts wings into this single large space. Following Tom Vander Ark's presentation I was also impressed by the designers' discussion of how the plan responds to the real possibility that the teaching methods used at Lynnwood High School will change several times over the life of the building. Clusters were laid out so that they can be combined in multiple ways, in order to accommodate different sizes of academic unit. This includes the option for introducing an internal stair to each pod if desired at a later date. The Agora organization also permits that the space to be subdivided, so that the school can function as well on evenings and weekends as it does when it is full of students during the week.
This elevation of Lynnwood High shows the careful window composition and tall light and ventilation shaft that work together to make both upper and lower classroom pods comfortable learning spaces. All the schools we visited this week showed thoughtful use of daylighting.
Our second stop on Monday was Marysville-Getchel High School Campus, by DLR Group. Completed in 2010, M-G is made up of four physically and administratively separate High Schools, which share very little outside of the 5th building on campus, the Community Commons, which houses a gymnasium and large servery. The campus' four schools are bright structures set in a wooded campus that is planted to be reflective of the Pacific Northwest.
One of M-G's schools- to the right- with a corner of the shared Community Commons building to the right.
Each school has a similar design- they were essentially identical during the initial core-and-shell phase, but each academy then tailored the spaces to their needs during a subsequent TI phase. Our first stop was at the International School of Communication, and I noticed the students' sense of engagement and ownership as soon as we walked up to the door and were greeted by several students smiling and saying "Welcome to ICS." This feeling of pride in their school was the strongest argument for small learning communities that I've encountered. I was also impressed by DLR Group's successful effort at building a school with no hallways. Instead classrooms are connected through wide common spaces that are full of shelves of books like a library, tables like a commons, as well as stairs and seat walls like an entry lobby might have. These common areas are vital and well-used by the students, and by having these not-really-hall spaces do double- and triple-duty the schools accommodate more students per unit area, helping to reduce construction costs and offset the expense of building 5 separate structures.
Two images of Marysville-Getchell's successful common spaces. A stair connecting two levels of shared space (top); the main double-height shared space typical to all four schools, this one with a particularly nice view (bottom).
By the time the group had its fill with exploring the many corners of the M-G campus we were already behind schedule, so our organizers lured us back into our buses with bag lunches and got us moving toward our third destination of the day, Machias Elementary. I will save that and the rest of the day for a second post. If there was a main lesson for me on the morning of this second day of the CAE Fall Conference it was that both Marysville-Getchell and Lynnwood High impressed me as deeply social spaces, with opportunities for all of the students to experiment and learn about social life in a safe environment. That social side to High School is something that I hope we never lose, no matter how intensively computer-based learning is integrated into our schools.