McWillie Elementary School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

As a result of new district leadership and a commitment to move the district forward into the next century, a conventional need for additional capacity to relieve overcrowding created a unique opportunity to explore an unconventional and unique school design solution. District and community leaders were energized by the research findings on early childhood education and the potential for this research challenged educators to rethink their assumptions about learning and instruction, as well as inform and rethink school design. The school district set the objective of developing an urban K-2 elementary school facility to serve 500—600 learners, including a Montessori program.
The shared vision, articulated by the Planning Team through participatory planning workshops follows: “The learning environment at our school will foster visionary leadership, promote reading and early literacy, a love of learning, use developmentally appropriate practices, encourage parental and community involvement, support innovative educational methods and early childhood education, and promote in learners respect for one another and risk-taking.” Following this vision, the Planning Team asserted a number of design principles that have been successfully implemented into the final design:

1. Educational Philosophy of Activity-based Learning: The school should accommodate the educational philosophy of “activity-based learning” at all levels. Activity-based learning strategies have been found to be particularly effective in early childhood education. The “kindergarten” model was chosen for ALL learning areas including 1st and 2nd grades.

2. The House Plan: Learners have been subdivided into smaller “families” of 125 in five distinct but physically connected single story, child-scaled “Houses”. Each House contains five Learning Areas/Classrooms, a central Family Room for larger gatherings and a Project Kitchen for hands-on learning. Common areas of the school include: a Foyer/Welcoming Area, a Discovery Center, a Music Performance Space, and a Dining Hall which also serves as a gathering space for the entire school. A series of interconnected outdoor learning environments or Learning Gardens weave all the elements of the school together.

3. Standardized House Layout: The spatial layout of each house was planned and designed to be identical for both standard and Montessori programs for flexibility in future changes in educational program. Standard sizes also provide a second level of flexibility in accommodating both conventional grade configurations and multiage & looping configurations.

4. Partner with Existing Pre-K Programs: Although the Planning Team preferred a Pre-K program, based on budgetary restrains, the decision to provide a Pre-K program would be made by the future leadership of the school. The Planning Team strongly recommended the school leadership consider partnering with existing childcare and early childhood education programs in the area.

5. Involve Leadership in Planning & Design: The Planning Team recommended that the principal of school be identified and become involved in the design process as soon as possible to maintain institutional memory of the building design intent.

Educator Narrative

The building design committee comprised of a wide array of community members, district employees, parents, grandparents, teachers and administrators charged the architect with the task of designing the building with very specific, unique, and well defined ideas about teaching and learning for the facility. These ideas were formulated to meet the highly specific needs of the Montessori program housed in the building, as well as to fully meet the needs of the traditional classrooms comprising the balance of the building. The building was successfully designed to facilitate learning, and its flexible layout provides the opportunity where all classrooms could become Montessori environments, or all could become traditional classrooms, whichever future demand necessitates.

The essential elements defined were many. The building was to support hands-on, activity-based learning that would intrinsically be a part of both teacher and student’s experience. While the building is a rather large facility serving over 600 elementary students, it was designed to be a welcoming, home-like environment with a high priority on natural light and aesthetic qualities. This was essential in the need to facilitate the transition from the home environment to the school environment for these young students.

This concept was accomplished with the learning houses. The students and teachers are divided into fives learning houses. When the student enters her “house”, she will be in the family room designed as a gathering place to be used for group activities or for an individual student that may need space outside the classroom for a larger, more involved project. Adjacent to the family room is the project kitchen used for food preparation by the students, as well as science experiments. Also adjacent to the family room is the teacher’s office/work room shared by the team of five teachers in that learning house. This space provides for storage of team supplies, a workroom for teachers to complete their projects and as a meeting space for teacher and/or parent meetings. From the family room and kitchen, the student moves into her classroom environment designed to be a large, unencumbered space that is filled with natural light, individual restroom facilities and a classroom storage room. From each classroom the students can freely move outside onto the learning porch. The learning porch further transitions to the outdoor learning garden, which is available to each classroom, student and teacher. The building design supports the importance of learning opportunities outdoors as well as, and as easily as indoors. This was successfully accomplished with the access to the outdoor learning gardens.

The building was successfully designed to support and encourage individual learning styles and needs. This was accomplished through the wide variety of teaching and learning environments available within each learning house. While the traditional building design limits student’s learning to the classroom, the learning environment in this building includes the family room, project kitchen, the actual classroom, the learning porch and outdoor learning garden. Students move freely through each of these spaces as dictated by the project they are focused on.