Designing a new school - again!
Tuesday, November 12, 2013 at 05:54AM Mankato voters on Tuesday approved the largest capital bond levy in the state — almost $69.5 million to pay for the construction of a new middle school, another middle school addition, a junior/high school renovation and the expansion of a high school cafeteria.
“When I talk to our community members, it’s clear to me that they want our schools to stay strong,” said Superintendent Sheri Allen. “And that’s the commitment they’ve made to us.” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, November 6, 2013
Last week, our voters didn't just approve. They approved with a whopping 70% in favor. The bond passed in all 10 districts. I'm proud of the trust our community places in its public schools - and I am proud that the trust is well-deserved.
Helping design our other middle school, Dakota Meadows, was one of my first tasks when joining the district 22 years ago. That school was innovative - and to me still feels that way. (See What You See and What You Don’t See: A Tour of Mankato’s Dakota Meadows Middle School, Minnesota Media, Winter 1993). But designing the new middle school will be even more challenging.
Based on our last elementary building that opened two years ago, the new middle school will be LEED certified (environmentally designed), security aware, and community friendly with spaces for non-school activities and events. We will also try to make it as technologically advanced as practical.
I'm thinking about what it means to design a school knowing that all students will probably have personal devices. That an increasing amount of time will be spent in differentiated groups. That more instruction will be dependent on online rather than print resources. That nobody really knows where tech will be when the school opens, let alone 10 or 20 years down the road.
Some of my initial thoughts are revolving around:
- Creating a scalable, pervasive wirelesss infrastuture, of course, and resources for charging personal devices during the day
- Designing a library that is open, accessible, welcoming, social, productive, and part of a larger learning commons of student support services
- Creating labs that are more "maker spaces" than rows of 1 to 1 keyboarding stations
- Creating classrooms that are student rather than teacher-at-the-front-of-the-room focused
- Purposefully designing flexible spaces
If this project goes like past building projects, my voice will just one of many. A team will visit other new schools to learn from them. And there will be a budget, of course.
For those of us who love questions, problem-solving, learning, and planning, building a new school is just about as much fun as it gets. Stay tuned and send me your best ideas.
Reader Comments (4)
Lucky dog --new school, yay.
Comfortable, moveable furniture in the media center; plenty of room to reconfigure.
NICE spaces for teacher lounge(s) -- Lounge per grade level? Or call it a 'faculty room'.
A coffee bar somewhere.
I think it's more PC to call them "teacher workspaces" than lounges around here, but I get your point! We are thinking along the same lines.
Appreciate the ideas,
Doug
The best thing we did in Tunis (before and after the fire) was to get shelves on wheels. We could "redefine" our space easily as we acquired more books and equipment AND when we wanted to have a large group activity, we just moved the shelves out of our way. It is important to get sturdy shelves with wheels that move easily when shelves are full.
In Shanghai our laptop lab had colorful tables of various sizes and shapes with lots of power outlets and network points (in case the wifi went down). One of the coolest things in that area was a green wall so kids could create amazing videos - just like the weather people on television!
Good luck on your adventure. Congrats to such a sensible voter group.
Wonderful ideas, Gwen. Thanks for sharing them!
Doug