“All schools should be built this way.”
Category: People Centered Design
Sunday Smorgasbord: Design
![By Glen Edelson from ATLANTA, USA (Lox and eggs) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Lox_and_eggs_%282377739583%29.jpg)
A nice overview of the relationship between architectural design and well-being from The Guardian’s Cities.
“One, two, three, four!” they counted in Finnish. (For good measure, I jumped into the ditch, too.) The teacher, Pelo, explained that this experience represented how she and the two aides aspire to teach the kindergartners in the woods. She described this approach as “secret” learning, when children are unaware that they’re learning academic content. In the forest, these Finnish educators might lead the children to find sticks of varying lengths and organize them from shortest to longest, form letters out of natural materials, or count mushrooms.
Smart stuff, as usual, from Amanda Ripley.
It’s likely that as long as humans and their institutions hold prejudices and bias, their designs will reflect them. But some progress is possible. Two decades ago architect Ronald Mace imagined a new standard, in which anything humans make — a new piece of technology, a public park, a household product — is usable by everyone. He called this idea “universal design.” Today it’s an enforceable legal standard in Norway. One way to help us get there? Make sure the design process itself is also accessible to all.
“All of the choice-based reform efforts that they’ve come up with over the last 20 years have been designed to bring back all the white people who left after Brown v. Board. But the irony is that, if [districts] keep relying on choice, they’re going to be set up for failure because white people will not enroll their children in schools unless they’re already [predominantly] white,” said Natalie Hopkinson, a black parent and journalist, referring to extensive research showing privileged, white parents tend to send their kids to schools that they perceive as “high status.” “So the segregation keeps repeating itself as long as you rely on choice as a way to make the change.”
In the Philadelphia school district, 37 percent of the system’s 144,000 are chronically absent. Among high-school students, the figure shoots up to 51 percent. The districts in Baltimore and Milwaukee have similar numbers. For Cleveland and Detroit, the chronic absenteeism rates are around 50 percent, and more than 60 percent of Cleveland’s high-schoolers missed more than three weeks of school a year.
The report’s authors write that one common denominator linking these cities is the “nearly 100 years of historical actions that aimed to segregate African American populations in sections of the city with the poorest housing, greatest proximity to industrial pollutants, greatest exposure to violence, and highest unemployment rates, resulting in widespread inter-generational poverty.”
Social-Emotional Learning Starts with Adults
A whole-school approach to [Social-Emotional Learning] means that all the adults in the building — not just teachers and principals, but lunchroom monitors, bus drivers, librarians, and specialists — have to be invested and on the same page with SEL. In their own interactions, as well as in their work with students, adults should model the type of behavior they want their students to exhibit . . .
So while regular professional development can teach adults the nuts and bolts of integrating SEL into the school day, one more step is crucial to a successful program: Ensuring that adults develop their own social-emotional capacities. “Our approach has shifted towards supporting the adults’ own social emotional needs, addressing the stressors they may be experiencing as professionals in education.
—Rebecca Bailey, as reported by Leah Shafer, “What makes SEL work?” on Usable Knowledge
More on the need for adults to have the capacity for modeling self-control: Learning and Teaching Self-Control
Deaf Space
Some interesting design considerations for design of spaces that can not only provide a better environment for the deaf, but possibly a better environment for all.
A Successful Online School is Based On Relationships
—Chris Berdik, “Inside the Online School That Could Radically Change How Kids Learn Everywhere” on Wired
Unsurprisingly, one of the few virtual learning schools that demonstrates success is predicated on forming relationships between teachers and families. The competency-based aspect of its curriculum is also intriguing and worth keeping an eye on.
For students with disabilities and other students for whom more traditional schools can present significant obstacles, this form of learning holds great promise.
Schools & Ecosystems 