Page 6 - spaces4learning, Fall 2024

s p a c e s 4 l e a rn i n g EDITOR'S NOTE
THE MODERN STUDENT
EXPERIENCE
WHILE COLLECTING AND PROOFING all of the editorial content
for the fall issue, I couldn’t help but notice one thing: Today’s schools are
unrecognizable from the ones I attended growing up.
My 20-year high school reunion is still a couple years out, but it’s getting
a little too close for comfort. They recently sent me a fundraising brochure
(and a return envelope) in the mail. It looks like they’re renovating the
theater. They renovated the theater while I was there—a ground-up, build-
ing-closed-for-the-semester, redoing-the-entire-layout level renovation. The
project took about six months, and we ended up with one of the state-of-the-
art, high-tech, modern learning spaces we cover in this very magazine.
…well, the 2004 version of that, anyway. It probably needs a make-
over by now.
My mom was a teacher at the K–5 school I graduated from. The sum-
mer before eighth grade, she announced that all of the classrooms in my old
elementary school were being equipped with TVs—box TVs mounted in
each corner. I remember feeling the slightest bit aggrieved (“hey, we didn’t
get TVs”), but by eighth grade, the second and third might as well be pre-
school. I was too grown up to be jealous of elementary-school amenities.
It's possible that I watched too many movies growing up—Ferris
Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Dazed and Confused. But when I’m
prompted to picture a high school, the image that jumps to mind comes
straight out of the ‘80s. Drab hallways lined with lockers. Desks in rows
facing a chalkboard. The principal’s voice squawking over the PA like a
walkie talkie held up to a telephone. Cafeteria-tray lunches of Salisbury
steak* that stands on end when you balance it just right. All the classic,
borderline-nostalgic tropes of the American public-school experience.
Contrast that with the schools of today, the content of the following
issue. They feature expansive, daylit atriums. Student lounge and col-
laboration spaces. In-school cafes. Laptops and tablets and projectors and
smart boards. Outdoor learning spaces.
(My high school had a couch with a slashed-open cushion underneath
one of the stairwells in the science building. And use of that couch was
a Senior Privilege, as I found out pretty quickly toward the beginning of
my freshman year.)
I’m not sure if I’m jealous, or if it’s that today’s buildings hardly feel
like schools anymore. The student experience—aspects of education beyond
imparting knowledge—has grown in importance since I was in school. Be-
tween the old and the new, I know which environment I would have rather
attended. And I know which kind I’d like to send my kid off to every day.
Matt Jones
Senior Editor
6 FALL 2024 | spaces4learning.com
VOLUME 5 Issue 2
EDITORIAL
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