Category: Editor Post

A Space to Hack (but not in a bad way)

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Mark Reid, Space2Learn Co-Editor
SET-BC
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
@mmgreid

During years as a music teacher, I never lost sight of the fact that I would teach a student for the entirety of their high school experience. Unlike my colleagues in science, math, or social studies, I was the one-and-only band and choir teacher in the school. As some students take five years of social studies with a different teacher each year, the connection between music teacher and student-musician is quite long-term. The benefit of this is significant and frequently elicits the “with great power comes great responsibility” challenge – one I gladly accept. It is pretty encouraging, then, when these kids grow up and engage the leadership skills they’ve learned and mimic the community engagement we model. Having learned in a space that celebrated leadership, it is no wonder that students create meaningful spaces for others. Such is the power of education.

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of being a judge on a panel that would pick the winner of the 2018 edition of nwHacks, “Western Canada’s Largest Hackathon”. The invitation came from Jason Smith, a former student. He is easily described as a social motivator – his excitement about something is contagious and inspiring. What he and his peers on the organizing team may not have recognized is that this for-students-by-students learning experience established a space for participating university students to collaborate, improvise, innovate, and respond with a focus on making our world a better place. For a few examples, it is worth taking a look at the published list of winners. Despite the overwhelming currency of blockchain finance (pun intended), it is worth noting the many solutions to food security, accessibility, public safety, and education developed during this 24-hour work period.

I was impressed that this competitive space was free of dividers, barriers, or any form of isolating element. Intentional or not, the organizers sent a message that collaboration is critical to a better future. Mentors from sponsoring companies and institutions, including Google, Microsoft, Scotiabank, and Hootsuite roamed the room providing advice and making connections with the technology solutions that participants needed. Major League Hacking, a well-organized network of hackathons, brought equipment that participants could borrow. All this, in addition to coordinated meals and the occasional game, to make sure these hackers could sustain themselves through the entire 24-hour work period.

Photo courtesy nwHacks via Facebook

The whole experience reminded me of the three critical capacities that my good friend and edu-hero, Jelmer Evers, described to me as requirements for independent efficacy: tools, time, and trust. The organizers created a space that would facilitate engagement on multiple levels, recognizing both short-term needs and long-term possibilities.

It shouldn’t be lost that this event was organized by a group of individuals who are also full-time students. I can’t help but wonder what prior experiences informed their thinking as they developed such a highly-productive environment. How are teachers making the context of their choices known? This only reinforces the need for teachers to talk to our students about our own design processes. It is common practice to ask students to share their learning with teachers, but how do we make it more common for teachers to communicate how we design learning spaces, assessments, instructional experiences, and professional learning? I’d argue that this is how we inform a future generation of what it takes to make change, to empower, and to engage.

Mark Reid is a former Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize, Varkey Teacher Ambassador, Qudwa Fellow, TeachSDGs Ambassador, and the 2013 MusiCounts Teacher of the Year. He specializes in facilitating dialogue that connects policy and practice. With a background in music education, Mark has experience in the classroom and as a provincial curriculum coordinator at the BC Ministry of Education.

A Discussion in Abu Dhabi

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Mark Reid, Space2Learn Co-Editor
SET-BC
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
@mmgreid

“Careful the words you say. Children will listen.” – Stephen Sondheim (from Into the Woods)

The Qudwa Forum in October brought together a number of wonderful diverse conversations in close proximity to one another. It was a really fulfilling experience examining elements of education systems from around the world. Amidst the progressive dialogue, the Coffeehouse Session on “Classroom Design” challenged the notion that classrooms are a universally present component of the learning experience of children. As I’ve previously written, we know this isn’t the case. One simply needed to ask participants if any of their teaching occurs in a space other than a classroom. The response was staggering. Responses included “a room in a brothel in Mumbai”, “in the open space in a village in Mozambique”, and “wherever we can find a place that day”. These are pretty powerful messages about the diverse realities for education worldwide.

Now that a summary of the coffeehouse session has been published, I thought I might provide further detail about the session’s content. I should also complete a partially-captured thought about architects and their role in designing schools. What is absent from the summary is the initial point about the title “Classroom Design” being assigned to the session. It was really inspiring to hear participants readily agree that our language would exclude the term ‘classroom’ to take a more inclusive approach.

The important expectation for the session was that participants must link a design element with a particular learning goal. Impressively but not unexpectedly, every response met this with agreement and participants offered quality perspectives. Mike Wamaya, for example, made his point through establishing a powerful paradigm that “the students are the school, not the structure”. João Couvaneiro described students arranging themselves for collaborative and supportive work by forming themselves in groups as if they were constellations.

The message that tied so many perspectives together was the idea that the value of a learning space is enhanced when it has a familiarity to it. If students can relate to the space, they are more likely to feel connected to both the space and the learning. Mirroring the community into any learning space isn’t a significant challenge, but does take some mindful effort from both students and teachers.

Before I end up with a stream of questions or criticisms about an architect’s role in designing a school, I’d ought to complete the thought that was captured in the summary. I was being sincere when I commented that an architect (alone) is poorly equipped to design a school. Traffic flow and acoustics are just two critical and procedural considerations for design of a school building or learning space. The intelligent design is found in pedagogical factors, the capacity for space to guide or encourage natural gathering places, foster collaboration and interaction, and maximize the learning space footprint. This means considering how learning seamlessly continues from within a building to beyond its walls.

I invite you to read the posted summary from the Qudwa Forum and engage colleagues in some conversation on this topic. It may require making some time to connect with colleagues and focus on this topic. Students see how we construct and value a place for them to learn. They watch and they listen to how we establish, relate to, and engage the learning space. I would challenge you, then, to invite students to be the architects of their own learning space design. This is an excellent way to democratize the learning experience, which I know will make Sean Bellamy proud!

Mark Reid is a former Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize, Varkey Teacher Ambassador, Qudwa Fellow, TeachSDGs Ambassador, and the 2013 MusiCounts Teacher of the Year. He specializes in facilitating dialogue that connects policy and practice. With a background in music education, Mark has experience in the classroom and as a provincial curriculum coordinator at the BC Ministry of Education.

A Democratic Space in the UK

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Sean Bellamy, Space2Learn Co-Editor
Sands School
Ashburton, Devon, United Kingdom

Learning, like healing, needs buildings within which it can happen successfully.

The Sands School welcomes children aged 10-17 from a range of social backgrounds and abilities, who have chosen to study in a Democratic School, but who often come to this space because they have high levels of anxiety, issues with self esteem or confidence. In this space, students learn psychology, ecology, and history, while experiencing the value of mentoring and group/team-building work.

I have always appreciated that the building has been controlling us as much as we have been controlling it. I believe that your learning space can be another teacher. And it can also be a place where a child can day dream and be lost in their imagination, be inspired and where they can heal. The space I’ve designed encourages a sense of homeliness, amity and excellence.

     

By luck and design, it is at a’ Human Scale’ and the rooms and dimensions of the building encourage the people within it to react at a human scale as well. Classes rarely get larger than fifteen children, but then the rooms can only accommodate that many comfortably. And those children, who founded the school with us, loved the small rooms and the friendly atmosphere they created. One can often walk into lessons where there is as few as five and occasionally just one pupil.

Visitors often comment that the school has the feeling of a small university; that the children behave with great independence and initiative. Maybe this is something one can more easily learn in a small school where the conventional enormous economies of scale, that create places that are both impersonal and frightening to children and disempowering for all, do not exist.

Individuals can influence small buildings; no one gets lost and the movement from classes is easy and natural.

This building defines us as a family of learners. The amity created by the scale of the property allows noise, smells, events and even moods to be commonly felt. Information moves around fluidly and the feeling of common ownership is made possible by the very size of the enterprise. We, students and teachers alike, all feel that we own it and we all therefore care more for it.

Sean Bellamy is a Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize, the co-founder of Sands School, the Phoenix Education Trust, IDEC and an Ashoka Foundation Change Leader. I specialize in Human Scale and Democratic Education and work with the South Korean Ministry of Youth Health and Democratic School start ups.

Space2Learn – a blog for teachers, by teachers

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Thank you for connecting with our blog. We are happy to establish this forum for professional exchange!

Space2Learn is the joint idea and effort of Sean Bellamy and Mark Reid, two teachers who believe passionately in global citizenship education. This blog is a repository of ideas, stories, concepts, and solutions about the features and design elements of learning spaces in schools and communities around the world.

The drive behind Space2Learn emerged from a coffeehouse session at the 2017 Qudwa Global Teachers’ Forum. The session at Qudwa was part of a stream of forum-style discussions, each moderated by a teacher. The published topic for this discussion, “classroom design”, provided an interesting and conflicted means to start the conversation.

In a room set with rows of chairs, there was an observable and uncomfortable irony: talking about dynamic, modernized teaching and learning in a room arranged for a stand-and-deliver lecture. Adding to the conflict was the reality that several participants teach in community, outdoor, and unconventional spaces. As a group, we agreed to reframe the session away from ‘classrooms’ and toward the infinite number of spaces where teaching and learning takes place.

The key messages emerging from the session included:

  • recognition for Indigenous perspectives on place-based learning;
  • value for the learning space as a teaching tool; and
  • capacity for the learning to reflect supportive living spaces familiar to students.

A month has passed since Qudwa and this blog seeks to continue to the conversation. Space2Learn blog posts are written by educators who seek to share the stories of how they use their learning space in response to learning goals and challenges faced by both teacher and students. We hope you’ll consider contributing this effort to collect and share your perspective.