Portland architect chairs new school design

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The old-school method of teaching may soon be history. A new concept for schools being tested in New York City could change the way children are taught, as well as the spaces they are taught in.

Architect John Weekes of Dull Olson Weekes Architects recently was selected by the American Architectural Foundation to chair a design process for the School of One, a new education model developed by Joel Rose of the New York City Department of Education.

Now, after a successful pilot project using input from a design charrette led by Weekes last summer, the Department of Education this year will expand the School of One program to two more city schools.

Rather than choosing one curriculum for a class, the School of One creates curriculums for each student, based on their individual learning style. Instead of one teacher lecturing at the front of a closed classroom, four or five teachers roam an open learning space where students work alone at laptops, in small groups or in larger lecture spaces, depending on their curriculum for that day. The project was named one of Time magazine’s Top 50 Inventions of 2009.

“What was envisioned is the students would arrive in the morning, and a learning plan would be provided for them with activities to go through during the day,” Weekes said. “As you move through the school, you need space to accommodate all of those activities and the flexibility to change the space during the day for specific needs.”

Architects participating in the charrette departed from traditional school design, which aligns separate classrooms along a double corridor, to create a more open space that would serve the School of One curriculum.

Different types of furniture, including comfortable couches and tables and chairs, are used throughout the School of One. Glass and other transparent materials are used in movable partitions so teachers can monitor the students.

For a School of One pilot project focusing on mathematics at New York City’s Middle School 131, the school’s library was rearranged to become an open, flexible space with varying sizes of group areas and individual stations separated by movable partitions. There was a concern that the library’s few acoustic ceiling tiles would not reduce noise. But there was never a problem.

“The kids were quiet,” Weekes said. “The noise one might see in a classroom where kids aren’t engaged was substantially less.”

Also, students’ assessment scores improved when they were enrolled at the School of One, according to Weekes. In addition, Weekes believes that the School of One concept could lead to greater space efficiency in the design of new schools.

“If you look at the rendering for the School of One, the corridors are used,” Weekes said. “Usually at traditional schools they are empty for most of the day. With the pilot, we were able to add additional educational space without increasing the size of the building. This idea can’t require more resources, and we’re working hard to make it so we require even less space.”

Concepts like the School of One represent a larger movement in school design to move away from traditional classroom models, according to Craig Mason of DLR Group. His firm is currently working on a design for a middle school for Marysville School District in Washington state that will use more flexible learning spaces.

“In the past, you’d have a science room, a wood shop and an English classroom,” Mason said. “We’re trying to get away from that and focus on different types of learning. Instead of saying this is a science lab, we’ve come up with a suite of rooms such as a small workshop, a project lab and a studio for different learning activities.”

Portland Public Schools, meanwhile, is looking at how to modernize its school system to improve student performance. Stefee Knudsen, public engagement coordinator for the district’s Office of School Modernization, says it has looked at the School of One concept as one of many case studies, but is not considering it above any other learning method.

“I think it’s an interesting concept,” Knudsen said. “We are trying to gather up all sorts of case studies to see how they might inform what we do and how different learning approaches support changes in the architecture of our schools.”

Open classrooms became popular in the 1970s after the success of a few schools, which in some cases were built without any interior walls. But soon, the educational methods that made the open classroom work in the first place were lost, leading to problems such as noise and disruptive learning.

“Schools were constructed using open classrooms and they didn’t take the pedagogy with them,” Weekes said. “The schools were doing what was always done but in a new environment, and difficulties emerged.”

Weekes notes that the success of the School of One pilot project lies in careful training of teachers, as well as architects, on the methods and philosophies guiding the program, and that the pilot was designed specifically for a mathematics curriculum. Future pilots will create new designs for science and English programs. Construction will begin in February to prepare two existing schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn for School of One pilots.

“It’s a complicated process, but it ends up being so simple for the teachers and the kids,” Weekes said.