West Salem High School

Narratives

Architect Narrative

Exemplary Ideas
West Salem’s development spanned years of hard work to bring needed resources to our growing area, which helped to transform this once rural property into a community center. The school provides performance venues, gathering spaces, library, health and fitness resources, playing fields and parks for the surrounding neighborhood.

RESPOND TO THE ENVIRONMENT
A primary goal was to respect the land. The building is nestled into the hillside to reduce its scale, and fields are terraced to minimize site grading. A grove of trees was retained and parking areas were planted in an “orchard arrangement” to reflect the land’s former use. The building’s organization allows visitors to see only a portion of the structure at any one time, minimizing the building scale and increasing scenic opportunities. The City Parks Department created a new park on the site and a shared maintenance agreement for the use of recreation facilities.

SMALLER LEARNING COMMUNITIES
The school was designed to create a “lower forum”(9/10) and “upper forum”(11/12). Each forum contains two houses of 400 students with various educational spaces. Specialized learning areas occur in wings adjacent to each house. These areas provide opportunities for project-based learning according to strands of interest. The curved structure helps to minimize the impact of long corridors, while providing the ability to monitor building access and gathering places.

FLEXIBILITY IS KEY
The building is designed to be flexible. Classrooms can be set to multiple configurations for a variety of learning opportunities. Teacher planning space, conference rooms and separate entries for each house allow the implementation of a small school model, charter school or traditional departmental model.

AN EFFICIENT FACILITY
Sustainable design features provide opportunities for environmental learning. Use of daylighting, natural materials and textures; energy efficient measures and landscape features all contribute to a facility that performs 40% better than code. Site ecosystems provide outside learning opportunities. A sustainability guide was published to describe key features to our community.

Innovations
An inclusive design process provided opportunities for input, review and decisions by educators, community members, and staff. A week-long design charette allowed input into the fundamental design decisions. A separate eco-charette set goals for incorporation of environmental measures into the facility design. Staff were involved in plan reviews to ensure that building systems and materials provided long-term maintainability.

The design is a metaphor for transition and journey. The site itself transitions from rural to dense residential. The theme of “The Journey” embodies the student experience as a dynamic evolution offering opportunities along the way. This transition, the process of “moving” through the four years of high school, is celebrated throughout the building and site.

Lessons Learned
Collaboration with City agencies was time consuming and required contingency scenarios in case agreements fell through.

Sustainable design elements were feared to add cost to the project. All sustainable elements were bid as additive alternates. A favorable bidding climate allowed their incorporation.

Educator Narrative

LEARNING PRINCIPLES
The flexibility of the facility has enabled staff to offer instruction in a variety of formats. Academic areas of focus increase staff and students connections. The Guidance Center provides a place for students to seek personal and emotional counseling in addition to academic advising. The Career Center Coordinator, who assists students in post high-school planning, is also housed in that area. Multiple office spaces throughout the building have enabled West to house program specialists such as a Community Outreach Coordinator, Migrant Education Specialist, Speech Pathologist, and Family Advocate Counselor.

SMALLER LEARNING COMMUNITITES
The design of the building has provided the opportunity to easily establish smaller learning communities. West offers several focus areas of study, including Engineering Technology, Family and Consumer Studies, Business, Science Research, and Health Occupations. Because of the design of the building, related courses are easily scheduled within the same general area, thus breaking down the large campus as a whole into several smaller, close-knit learning communities. Conference rooms, which are distributed throughout the building, are commonly used for break-out sessions of small groups of students working on projects.

SPECIFIC LEARNING AREA CONFIGURATIONS
The distribution of science classrooms as well as the placement of teacher resource rooms has resulted in an integration of curricular areas; wings are not dedicated to any one particular academic area but rather a mix of math, English, science, social studies, foreign language, special education, and special programs. Centrally located teacher planning areas have resulted in the connection of staff members beyond the typical departmental realm. A separate entrance has been found for the parents of the preschoolers who access our community daycare center as part of the Family and Consumer Studies program.

TECHNOLOGY
The distribution of technology into the classrooms has had a tremendous impact on student learning, in participation in research, in student motivation, and in classroom participation. Because of the availability of technology within in the classroom, alternative education via on-line learning can be provided to those students needing a different method of delivery, whether they are credit deficient and need remediation or whether they are talented and gifted and need further challenges. The availability within the classroom has also enabled teachers to utilize resources included in textbook adoptions that previously were unavailable to them. Further training and inservice has been provided to staff members in how to utilize the technology at hand, and the need for continual training is paramount. To help facilitate this need, a Generation Y course (a course in which advanced students learn how to provide tech support to staff members) is being designed and will be implemented in the fall of 2003. Additionally, students are being better prepared for the technological world that awaits them beyond high school.

COMMUNITY USE
West Salem High School is quickly becoming a hub of activity for the West Salem community. Community events are held weekly throughout the building. Examples of facility use include elementary through high school plays and concerts, pageants, political forums, fund-raising auctions, training facilities, sporting and non-sporting competitions, meeting places for community clubs and organizations, training facilities, and even church services. Often times multiple community events are simultaneously scheduled throughout the facility.