West Point Junior High School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

Planning
This school is the result of a lively collaboration of players including teachers, students, District staff, community members, students, and architects. The District began by setting up a group to begin defining the program for a completely new and different facility. At the same time, the future project architects were organizing a seminar for local school districts focusing on the middle school philosophy. The marriage of client and architect led to a series of joint tours of outstanding facilities elsewhere.

Following design meetings, the committee added new members, including the school principal. Architectural pre-occupancy meetings began, to allow those who would be involved in the new school to become familiar with the concepts on which the new design was based. Furnishings, including learning space furniture arrangement, fixtures, and equipment suitable for a 21st century facility were selected by the architect. Newly hired staff, including faculty, counselors, and custodians, were hand picked for their eagerness to become a part of a 21st century educational team. Architects held teacher orientation during the first month of occupancy, and post occupancy meetings are currently ongoing.

The design committee created several challenges for the new building.
It must:
• Support an integrated curriculum
• Encourage collaboration
• Create community
• Pique student interest
• Enhance educational space
• Incorporate durability & maintainability

Appealing to the aesthetics of the young people attending the school was also a priority. The architects were asked to “. . create a facility so accommodating and appealing to young people that they can’t wait to come to school in the morning.”

One of the most critical imperatives was to buffer the 7th graders, students at the “turning point” of their lives, from the stress and fragmentation associated with the typical large junior high school experience.

Solution
The key to the final solution — the arrangement of the classrooms into three grade-level specific, double-lobed academic learning centers, or “houses”, surrounding (but connected through significant fenestration), a central collaboration space. These “houses” provide a highly flexible, open, and extremely visible environment for group collaboration, fostering critical student/student and student/teacher relationships. Conference rooms and faculty planning offices, toilet rooms, and lockers make up a “house”, promoting a cohesive environment in which students may live and learn.

Building as a Learning Tool (BLT’s) opportunities abound. Etched on the glass curtain wall at the building entrance, visitors read “welcome” messages in over 80 languages. The curved bridge that connects the upper level wings bears the Fibonacci series, prime numbers, and the numbers of Pi. The four classical elements, Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire, provide identities, color schemes, and way finding for the learning centers. “Off-the-grid” windmill power can be used to operate tools, and the building electrical meter readout in the tech lab illustrates the amount of electricity the building uses daily. Outside in the courtyard visible from the main gathering space, students are exposed to “the three types of rocks” and the three types of angles, and have the opportunity to study native plant life. A timeline of the fossil record flows along a 500 foot sidewalk between the play fields and the school building.

Individuals enter the building and move immediately into the jewel of the complex, a “glass box” that provides a striking setting for students and visitors to gather, eat, socialize, and watch performances and presentations.

Educator Narrative

In 1904, the first consolidated school in our county opened. It was called a consolidated school because it consolidated all of the one-room school houses that had previously served children into one three-story building. The design program included one primary directive: The classrooms could be no larger than on pot belly stove could heat. That directive produced small, sterile, intuitional rooms that housed children. In 2003, our program for this Junior High School was far more comprehensive and charged our architects with designing a school that supported learning and the highest levels of achievement for each child. That goal was met.

This facility has broken the mold of schools that continue to be designed for pot belly stoves. This magnificent junior high school has been created for communities of learners to work cooperatively in a variety of settings — from large group spaces to small conference rooms. It has been created to allow teachers to collaborate and to pool their talents toward the single goal of exceptional education for all students. As one explores this unique educational setting, one quickly notes the opportunities to learn in every aspect of the school’s design, notes the sense of community inherent in each grade level “house” and notes the state-of-the-art materials and technology that make this school a safe, warm, yet vibrant setting for learning.

We are proud of our new Junior High School. It is an educational community that values learning and proves it through its design. It supports each child’s quest to learn at high levels rather than only being warmed by a pot belly stove. If we are a nation of citizens who really believe that we can leave no child behind educationally, then we need to provide more schools like this one!

- Superintendent of Schools