GUERILLA EDUCATORS IS DEDICATED TO REALTIME EDUCATIONAL BEST PRACTICES IN ACTION. WE ARE A GLOBAL LEADER IN THE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF EFFECTIVE PROJECT BASED LEARNING ON THE FRONTLINES IN AND OUT OF CLASSROOMS. WE ALSO CONNECT EDUCATIONAL FACILITIES PLANNERS WITH THE TEACHERS/LEARNERS WHO USE THOSE SPACES.
In this video, Educational Facilities Planner Prakash Nair, President and Co-Founder of Fielding Nair International gives a walking tour of the teahing and learning spaces at Rafael Cordero Elementary school, located in Catano, just outside of San Juan, Puerto Rico. Cordero Elemental is the first re-designed school completed as part of the island-wide Schools for the 21st Century initiative, spearheaded by FNI.Cordero Elemental is the first re-designed school completed as part of the island-wide Schools for the 21st Century initiative, spearheaded by FNI. Take a look...
Click on the link to see a video at Isidro Sanchez High School, another FNI designed 21st century school, located in beautiful Luquillo.
As part of a strategic plan to realign the grade structure within the District, Schradergroup worked with York Suburban School District to complete renovations and additions totaling 61,327 SF for Valley View Elementary School and to convert the facility from a K-1 to a K-2 school. The project serves as an important lesson in the role of design as a valuable tool for successful strategic planning and adaptive re-use that maximizes educational resources.
At Valley View, the design of the addition maintains the character of the existing building and features the reuse of the original cupola for the school, removed years ago. The addition and renovations focus on creating parity in both the quantity and types of rooms in relation to Valley View's sister school, Yorkshire Elementary, which services the same population capacity.
What had once been a series of disjointed additions beginning in the 1940s is replaced with a design seeking coherence in the sum of its parts. The new entry hall provides a new physical and psychological 'center' for the building, marrying the old and new portions of the facility and their functions. The entry hall was also conceived as a gallery space providing articulated and well-lit surfaces for showcasing student activities.
The renovations maintain and expand an educational campus firmly rooted in a thriving residential neighborhood context. As part of the comprehensive campus approach to site design, a new bus loop design separates school bus, automobile, and pedestrian traffic, as well as removing bus idling from the busy township roads surrounding the facility. Other practical achievements include eliminating barriers to accessibility throughout the building and the campus. New and renovated existing HVAC systems augment the efficiency of a campus-wide central energy plant strategy for both heating and cooling.
For more information about Valley View Elementary School and other similar projects, please visit www.sgarc.com.
These videos detail the SchraderGroup charrette process for the York Suburban School District:
Guerilla Educators was privileged to have played a role in this remarkable project.
On November, 11-12, a select group of educational facilities planners from CEFPI had the opportunity to visit and participate in a NetZero Symposium at the Lady Bird Johnson Middle School, located in Irving, Texas. In this video, tech expert Glenn Meeks and I were given a tour of the school by Alejandro, a student there. The school is virtually paperless and produces more energy than it uses which is then sold back to the local utility company. Under the awesome direction of Principal Angie Gaylord, every aspect of the facility is used as a Project Based teaching and learning tool. Take a look... Special thanks for Scott Layne, Assitant Superintendent for the Irving School District and all of the wonderful students and staff who made this a very special event.
To view the video in full screen visit our YouTube page.
In this video, students from the Education Research Center at the Rose Tree Media School District have been tasked with the real-world project of designing their art space. The school is located in a mall and the ownership there has given the empty space adjacent to the school to be converted to the school's Art Center. The Project will continue through the Spring of 2012 and all design activities will be connected across a variety of curricular objectives. This is Inquiry Based Teaching and Learning at its finest. Take a look,...
Just found this video in the Guerilla Educators archives. Chris Lehman was the keynote speaker at the CEFPI Northeast Region Conference in the Spring of 2010. I shot Chris' talk in its entirety with an iPod about the size of a stick of gum, hence the narrow format. Amazing! As usual, Chris hit it out of the park like a Ryan Howard home run. Take a look...
This video documents the initial stages of the educational planning process to re-design physical spaces that were built for purposes other than teaching and learning. Realtor Brian Wilson, took school architect, David Schrader, Donna Sole, and me to inspect just such a structure that has not been used for its intended purpose in over 10 years. Both the physical facility and the location make the site a very good fit with the Elementary School for Sustainable Design. Take a look at the "before" phase of the design process.
Congratulations to David Schrader and his team at SchraderGroup Architecture. SchraderGroup's new design of the Yorkshire Elementary School, located in York, PA, earned a 2011 Citation of Excellnce from Learning By Design. Guerilla Educators is proud to have had a small part of this very successful design outcome particularly at the beginning of the process when Davis Schrader led a 2 day design charrette that included representatives from the York Suburban School District Administrators, Yorkshire Elementary School Teachers, and, of course, students. The videos, below, authentically capture the charrette in realtime. The program begins with Presenters setting the framework and establishing touchstones to help keep the actual design process on track and focused on a successful outcome. Take a look...
The next video begins with a view of the Yorkshire Elementary School site as it was prior to SchraderGroup Architecture's award winning re-design of the physical facility. It continues with the actual design ideas being developed by the charrette participants including critical input by students. This is how effective teaching and learning spaces are developed.
The final video of this series documenting how award winning teaching and learning spaces are designed shows Day 2 of the Yorkshire Elementary School Design Charrette and includes presentations of the participants design ideas. It is clear throughout the process that student input was both valued and incorporated into the final plan. Again, congratulation, David, on a job very well done!
This from the Learning By Design Magazine's Spring 2011 Edition ...
Yorkshire Elementary School of York, PA, impressed the judges on many levels. “It’s just extremely well-rounded. The exterior design is good architecture, and a lot of good thought has gone into the interior,” said the judges. “Everywhere you look, there’s a lot of good detail.”
The 60,835-square-foot building designed by SCHRADERGROUP Architecture LLC of Philadelphia, PA, serves up to 375 students in kindergarten through second grade. Two major goals included supporting the school’s cross-grade instruction format through spaces designed to allow for interaction, and using the building as a teaching tool. The project also is pursuing LEED Gold certification.
The judges particularly commended the site plan for this project, including the way it breaks down the massing and strives to make every classroom a “corner classroom” with two exposures. “That’s not easy,” they said. The building features a “main street” that runs between shared spaces on one side and academic spaces on the other. The media center functions as the core of the school.
The judges commented on the extensive use of transparency and of graphics throughout the interior, including large, colorful letters. They commented, too, on the careful selection of colors and finishes. Among the instructive building elements are exposed mechanical systems, a detention pond with wetland plantings, and the use of materials salvaged from the school that was replaced. Overall, they said, this is a “very thoroughly thought-through project.”
Arrived in beautiful downtown Savannah for the 2011 CEFPI Southeast Region Conference. Presenting Monday morning on the topic, "Connecting Students, Teachers, and Curriculum Via Project Based Learning". This year 5 themes will guide the event:
Collaborate
Educate
Facilitate
Participate
Invigorate
Here is how the themes will be related to my topic:
*Collaborate - Educational Facilities Planners/Designers/Architects can demonstrate that their design processes, when used in collaboration with educators and students will have powerful circular ramifications on more effective school design and more effective teaching and learning.
*Educate - The session will educate the participants about what we believe to be a vastly under-utilized asset, i.e. how physical teaching and learning spaces are powerful resources for effective teaching and learning.
*Facilitate - Understanding the participatory and Community Based power of Project Based Learning will facilitate more effective design.
*Participate - There is a tremendous feeling of satisfaction for Educational Facilities Planners that comes with knowing that they are participating in the whole education of the students who are their end clients. This process encourages school architects to establish real-world, in-class Community Partnerships with their clients and see the positive effects their participation engenders.
*Invigorate - Imagine students coming into teaching and learning spaces excited about being there because of active hands-on Projects in which they are about to participate. Imagine educators and educational facilities planners being active participants in those Projects. Imagine more effective educational facilities design as a result of the school architect as teacher/learner. This is what the session will address.
On Monday, March 28, Guerilla Educators has the privilege to be a Featured Presenter at the 2011 CEFPI SouthEast Region Conference. in Savannah, Ga.Our topic will be:
Connecting School Design to Students, Teachers and Curriculum Via Project Based Learning
Our Course Description is as follows:
Just as Project Based Learning is the gold standard of effective teaching and learning, school design is one of the gold standards of PBL. This session will explore how Educational Facilities Design processes can be used as a powerful resource in the educator's pedagogical toolkit. Through the prism of our Hallmarks of Effective Teaching and Learning, we will learn how Educational Facilities Planners can become real world Community Partners for curriculum-based Projects that use the physical facility as a 5 dimensional (including Real-Time and Cyber-Space) teaching and learning tool. Once we understand the premise that the educational facility can be a catalyst for the development of academic and social proficiencies, regardless of demographics and even independent of whether the spaces have been designed effectively, then Educational Facilities Planners can begin to see the positive effects of these “inside out” understandings on the bottom line. In the session, we will use authentic short videos of real students conducting real projects in and out of real classrooms with real school architects, to demonstrate these processes and to show how they may be incorporated into your Planning. Plenty of time will be built in for discussion so Planners, Designers, and Architects can walk away with a deeper understanding of what takes place inside the physical teaching and learning spaces they create.
See you in Savannah!
March 26, 2011
I recently had the privilege of participating in a webinar conducted by Mark Sidding, RIBA, an architect from Watson Batty Architects in Leeds, UK. Mark shares an innovative school project, the Dearne Advanced Learning Centre, below. He covers three key principles: the impact of physical space on learning, changing the way that learning is delivered, and infusing technology into flexible environments for multiple learning modalities. The project is now complete and is undergoing a rigorous assessment to determine its success. Mark shares lessons learned from this project. The presentation was hosted by Cefpi Michigan Chapter and 21st Century School Design.
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