Vision and Guiding Principles
Disruption to Potential:
Disruption of schools during pandemic paves the way for a new classroom design
Schools have reopened across New York State and the country, but we need more than reactive solutions, we need a reimagined classroom. Susanne Angarano, Principal of Vaysen Studio, recently wrote “Disruption to Potential,” an op-ed for Interiors + Sources magazine.
Based on a regenerative design philosophy combined with experience working closely with public school superintendents, the concept of reimagining schools has emerged. The hypothesis is as follows:
To reimagine schools in a way to provide barriers to the virus without creating barriers to learning and to use this disruption to initiate advancements that enhance student experience.
Our team’s hypothesis was derived through a journey with selected school district clients and their communities. A quick synopsis of our holistic response includes the following:
Reevaluating Prior to Opening
To investigate this, we considered how schools looked previously and how teachers, students and their families were able to learn before and during the pandemic.
Before the pandemic, the concept of “school” was inseparable from educational facilities and traditional pedagogies. Challenging districts to articulate what “school” is, apart from the facilities and the physical classroom, helps to identify the culture of their district and what is innate in it and their community.
Also, while being thrown into the classroom-from-home model was not ideal, there are valuable takeaways from that experience. For instance, the online classroom and flexible hours allowed some students and teachers to thrive. Others, however, struggled to keep up or stay engaged, and greater acknowledgment of the diversity of learning styles and aptitudes has emerged out of the pandemic.
A New Framework for Schools
Working with districts to aid in their reopening plan, design strategists at Vaysen Studio developed a framework to organize each district’s reopening, taking into consideration facility capacity, student-teacher dynamics and the school’s culture.
The framework categorizes these considerations into: Essential Functions, Facilities and Education (see above illustration). While each consideration has its own challenges, they overlap and affect each other.
Surrounding these considerations are the vision and guiding principles of the district, and at their center is the drive of enhancing student experience. Holistically framing these considerations and overlaps is key to establishing the balance of instructional, facility and student/teacher mindfulness, and making decisions in service to the vision and guiding principles of the district.
Applying this New Framework
For one district, the vision and guiding principles of school, beyond learning academic content, emerged to be: Fostering connections and relationships; providing equitable opportunities; flexibility (of learning and teaching strategies); and a system of structure and accountability. These drivers are adeptly realized in a 21st century learning model. The district came to acknowledge a rigid return to traditional learning environments might actually hinder these goals.
Moving forward, Vaysen Studio will continue working with our school districts to mark the opportunities as we uncover them and evolve towards a more dynamic educational experience, testing our hypothesis.
From this great disruption, we can find great potential—you just have to know to look, listen, engage and synthesize.
Susanne Angarano, Principal
Catherine Wolfe, Learning Environment Strategist
Edward McGraw, Principal