Page 50 - spaces4learning, Fall 2021

spaces4learning BUILDING BLUEPRINTS
NEW SPACES FOR A
NEW ERA OF LEARNING
Winton Woods School District debuts two campuses designed around project-based learning.
By Jeff Parker, ALEP, LEED AP
THIS AUGUST, Winton Woods School District—a culturally inclusive, minority-majority, open enrollment school district serving approximately 4,000 students in southwest Ohio— opened the doors to two cutting-edge campuses that turn “tradi- tional” education on its head. While the campuses are innovative in their own right, they represent more than just a new home for the Winton Woods Warriors. They represent the beginning of a journey that is more than 10 years in the making.
In 2011, the district transformed its pedagogical approach to education. In partnership with the New Tech Network, Winton Woods moved to project-based learning (PBL); since then, PBL has been adopted at all grade levels, making Win- ton Woods the first school district in the country to embrace PBL from preschool through twelfth grade.
Yet even with major improvements, the district’s crum- bling, outdated and temporary classroom spaces couldn’t accommodate the depth of instruction and engagement required for PBL to improve educational outcomes. Specifical- ly designing spaces to support its pedagogical approach, the district argued, would both accelerate the successful adoption of PBL and drive 21st-century collaboration, communication, critical thinking and creativity skills.
It was with this argument in mind that taxpayers in 2016 approved a plan to consolidate the district’s six buildings into two campuses—one for grades 1-6 and one for grades 7-12—and $93.5 million to fund it. By 2017, Winton Woods had hired architect and design firm SHP to guide the district through the community engagement, educational visioning, architectural design and construction processes. Construction finally began in 2019.
Student Voice, Student Choice
Student voice is a cornerstone of PBL. As such, the district and SHP recognized the students themselves were in the unique position of having the deepest insight into how their new learning spaces needed to function. After all, students had already experienced PBL in a traditional school setting. They knew the challenges.
Students, therefore, became a critical part of the design process. Involving them early and often capitalized on their ex- periences and gave voice to their ideas and needs. SHP tapped into a range of students from across the district to ensure that both student creativity and student ownership were present.
Starting with the educational visioning process, SHP
examined six shifts in education that would drive the design: academic excellence, community connections, monitoring, assessment and accountability, teaching that engages and outcomes that matter. In addition, SHP adapted its educational visioning process to the hallmarks of PBL instruction: a driv- ing question, knows and need-to-knows, project authenticity, public presentation(s) and student agency. Adopting the same approach as students experienced in the classroom grounded the process in real-world challenges; it made the outcomes real.
Several foundational needs quickly emerged from this effort. Students emphasized their desires for collaboration, a student-centric culture, fun learning opportunities, small and large workshops, student movement, active engagement and technology in all its forms.
Four Overarching Themes
The educational visioning process took the students’ very literal ideas and abstracted them down to their core meanings. As SHP began designing, these themes became the basis of the design.
• Eat & Learn: Students wanted to grab a snack or eat lunch
when they were hungry. They wanted control of their day. And they didn’t see a reason why eating and learning couldn’t hap- pen together. The goal was a comfortable, multi-use learning environment that supported a student-centric culture—one that empowered them with trust, respect and autonomy. The result is distributed dining, an eat-where-you-like experience that brings the food to the kids and redistributes square foot- age previously used for a cafeteria to directly support learning.
• Present & Educate: Showcasing student work is intrinsic to PBL. Students wanted transparent and connected learning communities for curating, sharing and presenting their work, with various venues at various scales. The goal was to leverage formal gathering and presentation spaces and less predictable, informal ones, too. The result is a learning stair, hands-on labs and abundant display cases and boards.
• Inside & Outside: A connection to nature was important to the students—and was more about social-emotional wellbe- ing than digging in the dirt. The goal was to be able to step
50 FALL 2021 | spaces4learning.com