THURSDAY | APRIL 2, 2020

9:45 AM - 10:45 AM

Room: Van Ness

As architects and educators, our authentic challenge is to design learning environments that provide and promote the social and emotional skills necessary for all types of students to be successful in school and on into adulthood. The purpose is to create a living environment where the pedagogy must be designed in an integrated fashion, so learners are required to exercise collaboration, reflection, negotiation, critical thinking, and empathy. We are constantly asking ourselves “How can we create a thriving social and emotional learning environment that encourages wellness and fosters student-directed learning”? In this workshop, we highlight the necessary proof points we have learned from gathering information and prototyping the spaces needed for developing wellness and student-agency through the confluence of thoughtfully designed learning spaces and instructional transformations. Attendees will learn how this integration works and the critical design elements that must be considered when creating truly engaging learning spaces. In this hands-on workshop, we identify the vital school design language, school leadership, and teacher professional development shifts needed to link student-directed learning with innovative learning spaces to ensure students are the beneficiaries of modern learning environments. During this process, a socially supportive and truly nurturing environment is created as the backdrop and in support of student-directed learning. You cannot achieve one without the other! We use the Five Stages of Finding a Solution from Developing Natural Curiosity through PBL (Laur & Ackers, 2017) to examine these proof point shifts in several recent landmark Pathfinder projects recently completed at:

• Eden Park Elementary School, Cranston, RI
• Col-legi Montserrat in Barcelona, Spain
• Academy of the Holy Names, Tampa, FL
• International School of Kazan, Kazan, Tatarstan, RF
• NIST, Bangkok, Thailand

Learning Objectives:

1. Gain a better understanding of how to create a living environment where the pedagogy must be designed in an integrated fashion, so learners are required to exercise collaboration, reflection, negotiation, critical thinking, and empathy. View examples of schools personalizing student mastery and agency through the confluence of facility design, task selected furnishings and curriculum to produce personalized results.
2. Examine the next generation of practices needed to create social-emotional learning environments that transition classrooms intended to operate as enclosed spaces, with minimal connectivity to re-imagined interconnected, interdisciplinary learning communities that foster and support student-directed learning.
3. Identify key strategies for identifying the vital school design language, school leadership, and teacher professional development shifts needed to link student-directed learning with innovative learning spaces to ensure students are the beneficiaries of modern learning environments.
4. Learn the Five Stages of Finding a Solution from Developing Natural Curiosity through Project Based Learning (PBL) (Laur & Ackers, 2017) through the examination of these proof point shifts in a series of recently completed landmark Pathfinder projects.

Speakers:

• Jill Ackers, Senior Educator and Learning Designer, Fielding International, LLC
• Jay Litman, Partner, Fielding International