A4E INSIGHTS: POST-PANDEMIC EDUCATION, ACCORDING TO THE EDUCATORS BY OLIVIA GRAF DOYLE, A4E DESIGN PRINCIPAL & PARTNER As the Design Principal and Partner at A4E, Olivia Graf Doyle sought direct knowledge of the pandemic impact on learning environments and the changing future of education. Her interview with the following three educators provided insightful expertise for evolving A4E’s educational design strategy in a post-pandemic world: Carey Upton, Chief Operations Officer at the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, Dr. John Puglisi, Superintendent of the Rio School District in Oxnard, California, and Alexander Boekelheide, of Pasadena City College. Carey Upton Chief Operations Officer: Maintenance, Operations, Transportation and Facilities Use Departments, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Carey Upton’s unconventional journey to supervising school facilities includes directing, designing, producing, and stage managing over 400 theater productions at major regional theaters. These extensive experiences have led to the passion for engaging learning environments that he brings to SMMUSD.
Dr. John Puglisi Superintendent, Rio School District John Puglisi, Ph.D. has worked as superintendent for three California school Districts over the last twenty years and has worked as an educator in K-12 schools for thirtysix years. John also serves as adjunct professor at California State University Channel Islands and California Lutheran University. In addition, Dr. Puglisi is an active educational researcher with multiple publications, a musician, artist, husband, and father of three. Alex Boekelheide Executive Director, Strategic Communications and Marketing, Pasadena City College Alex Boekelheide has served higher education in a communications role for the last twenty-five years, and Pasadena City College since 2015. He is a multimedia communication professional with deep experience in nonprofit strategic communication and holds a Master of Arts in Communication Management from the University of Southern California. He also sits on the board of Pasadena Media.
A4E: How are you integrating changes for both shor t-term and long-term impact at your District? Upton: It is challenging to drastically shift classrooms and school sites to support the limitations required to make students and staff safe during the pandemic. Many of the requirements to protect students are heading in the opposite direction of the work we are doing to meet the needs of 21st Century learning. Where we were trying to increase flexibility and collaboration, we are pushing students back into fixed desks in rows facing a teacher. At the same moment, the improvements we have made to classrooms in the direction of 21st century learning have helped us to implement the changes required by the pandemic. This includes improved classro om technology, increased interactive and paperless tools, flexible furniture, enhanced outdoor learning, even upgraded HVAC systems. The spaces we have already upgraded are better equipped to respond to the new needs more than those that are decades back.
Rio del Sol K-8 STEAM School // Rio School District
Puglisi: Making the learning spaces healthier will benefit everyone. More light, more access to the outdoors, smaller class sizes, are all better for everyone. However, the challenge of human connections is a COVID-19 dynamic we will all struggle with. Staff getting better at virtual teaching and schools prioritizing what they want kids to do online and face-to-face is an opportunity to transform learning. Boekelheide: This pandemic has given us a chance to think fundamentally about how we serve students – both online and in person, both in an instructional setting and in other services. There are many processes and ways of doing business that we have been able to take apart and reassemble, so we can really understand what is in the best interests of our students. For example, we have learned that we need to expand our service touchpoints into a whole slew of unpredictable areas and make them all equally robust and interconnected. Our call center operators and chatbots and vir tual welcome center counselors all rely on accurate information posted to our website, which puts pressure on our web editors, and the cycle just continues.
A4E: What do the changes in curriculum and space design currently being implemented for reopening in the Fall mean for students, teachers, the community, and parents? Upton: This is what is making the decision so difficult. Students remaining in their homes are being negatively impacted in many ways that would argue they should be back in school. On the other side of that argument, it is questionable if it is safe for students to be in school due to the potential of contracting and spreading the virus. In the middle, what type of experience are we inviting them back into? Puglisi: We will have lower class sizes, less frequent face-to-face contact, more dependence on home learning, masks, shields and distances between kids will challenge everything we think we know about how we help kids learn and develop. Our end of year campus closures gave us some experience and data to draw from, but it will be a new universe to create. The function of the facility will never be more important. Boekelheide: The answer to this question changes daily, and that’s probably the biggest challenge we face – consistently communicating expectations with our audiences. As it is today, we are planning to offer essential in-person instruction in fields where it is a must – the health sciences and certain technology courses – but of course we are open to adapting if the circumstances change.
A4E: How do you think this pandemic can serve to disrupt the status quo and provide more equity to all students? Upton: The pandemic is disrupting the status quo. We are seeing the benefits and limitations of distance learning. We are also exploring asynchronistic learning. We are remembering what is important about in person learning and appreciating where we are headed in future ready or 21st century learning. I’m seeing positive movement toward letting go of older learning models and being more open to new. When we get back to being in school, I think instruction and learning will be different. Puglisi: Conventions in educational organizations are long lasting and tough to budge. Many are worth keeping and promote stability. Many slow adaptation and development and end up reconstructing processes and systems that no longer fit kids’ needs. What we need now is collaboration, flexibility, and innovation. This is not what we typically think of schools.... our challenge will be to make this happen. Boekelheide: It’s been said that this pandemic is shining a bright light on gaps that have existed for a long time. We have substantial technological inequity, particularly among students of color, as it relates to access to online instruction or services. That needs to be fixed. Over time, our administrative systems have grown complex and convoluted branches that need to be pruned back during a time of changing service expectations.
“What we need now is collaboration, flexibility and innovation...our challenge will be to make this happen.”
Lincoln Middle School, Campus Master Plan // SMMUSD A4E: What are the challenges you foresee in the long term, and how can the changes we make now evolve so that the strides we were making aren’t lost? Upton: Some people are saying that the new normal for schools will be physical distancing and distance learning. They say we will never go back to close collaboration and deep interaction. This thought terrifies me. I seriously question if we can remain human if we don’t return to interacting. Can we remain human if we no longer gather in groups? Can we remain human if we are no longer allowed to play? However, what excites me is I think this will accelerate a new normal that will be more evolved than we were. This will include greater equity and participation.
Puglisi: There are so many… The greatest challenge is the demand to improve the learning between parents and schools. They are now more than ever challenged to work together to provide what is needed for their children and they are stressed and disrupted. When the triangular relationship between child, school, and parent is strengthened, there are great opportunities for survival, resilience, and yes ...even perhaps THRIVING. Boekelheide: I think this is definitely a marathon, not a sprint, so my concerns are with our institutional and individual stamina to maintain flexibility and resiliency in the face of continuing stressful change. We’re making efforts to experiment and document our successes, but there are times where the need to respond quickly supersedes our ability to deliberate and consider every consequence of our actions. There’s a lot of building the airplane as it moves down the runway.
Career and Completion Center // Pasadena City College A4E: Any other big ideas for the future of learning? Upton: When I can I take a long view, I’m optimistic. I think we are exactly where we need to be. This pandemic has given us a needed pause to check in with where and who we are. Teaching humans from early childhood to being adults is always an arduous journey. This pandemic has forced us look again at this process. I think we will return better. Puglisi: There is a lot of talk about equity these days. These times make everything more transparent and obvious. Kids who have parents who can and know how to help and support will do much better than those who do not. Schools will have to accept this or do something about it... Schools will have to design to give kids what they need and that may not be the same for all. This has always been true, now it is shockingly exposed.
Boekelheide: It’s a difficult time, but we’ve seen before that trying times lead to new thinking and new approaches to helping people. I’m optimistic that our system and our sister systems – K-12, public universities, private higher ed, research institutions – will emerge from this phase in a stronger position that we were entering it, even if that transition takes a long time.
“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” -John F. Kennedy