The next generation of schools What if we focused school design on supporting teachers?
Roel Krabbendam, RA, NCARB, M.Ed.
Introduction
The re-alignment in education around 21st Century Learning and the internet has certainly changed schooling, with a focus now on skills (Creativity, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication…and possibly Cooperation, Connection, Confidence, Character, Compassion, Contribution, Competence, Commitment, Concentration, Control…and even Citizenship and Culture…) as much as Content or traditional Curriculum. The schools themselves haven’t changes much however, except to install internet-connected, computer-driven projectors, and the teachers are no more supported than they ever were, which is to say hardly at all. The culture is adept at imposing mandates on teachers, and demanding accountability for the performance of their students, but it appears reticent to imagine augmenting support. The result is a dramatic teacher shortage, and billions spent annually struggling with the problem.
This paper examines the research on teachers and their mission, and proposes an alternative approach to teaching environments, an approach that actually supports teachers.
We are spending over $100B per year in the United States on school building construction.1 Can the money be better spent? Can schools be re-imagined to be more effective and better support teachers? Isn’t that $100B annual investment in facilities an incredible opportunity to contribute solutions instead of pretending neutrality? This is the topic at hand.
A. Public education: present tense
According to the Us Department of Education,2 13.4% of teachers leave their jobs every year in the United States, half of those teachers leaving the profession altogether. That rate jumps to 20% in high-poverty schools.3 40-50% of new teachers leave teaching within 5 years.4
The cost is astronomical, in money and access to effective teaching. The State of California saw approximately 18,700 teachers leave the profession in 2008-2009 at an estimated cost of between $82M and $178M. The cost for the United States is estimated between $1B and $2.2B.5 More difficult to quantify is the effect on students. However, a 2016 survey of 211 California school districts published by the California School Boards Association and the Learning Policy Institute shows that 55% of districts are filling vacant positions with staff holding substandard credentials, and the problem in 81% of surveyed districts is getting worse.6 In the words of one District Administrator quoted in this fact sheet:
“I believe the worst is still to come. …[I]n the end, the students lose.”
The situation worsens, yet we do little to disrupt the status quo. It should be all hands on deck.
What is driving away teachers? Isolation is clearly one issue. A study of burnout contagion among teachers published in 2000 showed a correlation between lack of interactions and burnout.7 Community participation and support is identified as one of six key domains for understanding burnout in the Areas of Worklife model of burnout.8 Opportunities for collaboration is another factor. A Japanese study shows an inverse relationship between burnout and collaboration, identified four personality types among 396 teachers and medical care workers, and studying them over the course of a year. The study clearly identifies indicators of burnout decreasing as collaboration increased.
Student engagement is also identified as a correlate with teacher retention, as documented in a study of 15 schools out of Cape Breton University in Nova Scotia, Canada. According to the study:
“Of particular note was the predictive power of student participation in the classroom and school in reducing teacher burnout”9
A school dedicated to nurturing student engagement is a school dedicated to nurturing teachers.
Yet, teachers remain isolated in their classrooms, reliant on their own personality, whatever life they can coax out of their bulletin boards, and the magic of computer projection. That is the gist of the problem. A report from the Alliance for Excellent Education bluntly states the following:
“Teaching conducted largely out of the sight and hearing of other teachers must cease to be the norm. A new paradigm is needed for powerful systems of professional learning by which a clear vision of effective teaching informs the entire program and new teachers receive comprehensive induction and access to school-based collaborative learning”.10
Unfortunately, schools designed and built on the 18th century model one-room schoolhouse model depend on teachers isolated in “their” rooms.
Anecdotally, teachers themselves suggest the following strategies to avoid burnout: collaborate with peers, vary instructional methods, change the scenery, get up and move.11 Again, isolation in a room optimized for just one activity, separated from your colleagues, addresses none of these recommendations.
Clearly, the present facility and operations model requires re-formulation. Luckily, we have $100B per year to build solutions.
B. Public education: mission
How do teachers see their role? According to Megan Power in a 2019 article in Educational Leadership, they are increasingly focused on the learning experience:
“…the role of a teacher today is shifting. No longer is the focus of good teaching mainly on delivering content. Rather a good modern teacher is a designer of experiences”.12
Yet, all we give most teachers is a classroom optimized for content delivery, the students held in their seats, passively consuming the material.
C. Public education: facilities focused on supporting teachers
One powerful way to support teachers in their mission of delivering powerful, memorable, visceral learning experiences is to offer them teaching environments that support student engagement. Our vision of the next generation of schools surrounds a hub for communities of practice with a rich array of diverse learning environments, all directly connected to the outdoors. Teachers negotiate and schedule the use of these environments among themselves, knowing that each of them is designed as a “loose fit” and flexible enough for various modalities so that the negotiation is low stakes. The result is responsive to all of the strategies recommended by the teachers themselves: space and community for collaboration, varied environments amenable to diverse modalities, and the opportunity to move and change the scenery.
The book school (Ludovicus, Boston, 2018) offers a more expansive lexicon of new classroom typologies, along with the research and issues that birthed each typology (Figure 3).
This paper focuses on the hub at the center of these various teaching environments, supporting a community of practice. This hub takes no inspiration from the traditional teacher’s lounge, that adults only respite from the kids, which surprisingly proves to host little more than a large table and chairs, a magazine rack, a refrigerator and some bad coffee. Rather, this hub posits school as a collection of communities of practice, each with their own interests and language (words, numbers, images, objects and musical notes, for example), this hub for each a community center.
Each hub offers professional workspace, an array of sit-stand desks most likely, one per teacher. There is a kitchenette with open island, refrigerators and an espresso machine, no different than any professional environment, but this island is likely to host one-on-one student/teacher interactions or collaborations of all sorts. This hub is open to students as well as teachers, and it is common to see students working here. This hub expands readily to the outdoors, even in wintery climates, and there are tables and chairs and whiteboards inside and out.
Within the hub, there is a physical shrine to all that community of practice holds dear. Unlike a traditional 2 dimensional bulletin board holding transient and so devalued materials, this shrine holds some things tightly and others ephemerally. It invites contemplation. It offers tantalizing questions and might be constructed of hypotheses. It offers alluring possibilities and might be constructed by students and teachers together digging into issues.
Elsewhere, there is an electronic array of curated videos, more inspiration and more possibility. Elsewhere, books and resources with covers out, the cover art as alluring and persuasive as anything Madison Avenue might produce, inviting students to take a peek...inviting their devotion. Elsewhere, a pop-up classroom or kiosk, perhaps just some relaxed seating around a whiteboard or screen, invites teaching and learning out in the open instead of hidden behind classroom walls.
The key is this: rather than excluding students from an adult domain, this hub invites students to immerse themselves in the domain. Rather than emphasizing the difference between teachers and students, this hub invites a genuine sense of participation: of community. This hub supports teachers by nurturing student engagement. This hub supports teachers by offering a professional workspace among peers. This hub supports teachers by offering community and collaboration. This is the future of schools.
D. Public Education: future tense
Public school suffers from brain-drain. The teachers are leaving, staff shortages are common, and the problem is becoming worse. Rather than thinking of school facilities along traditional typological lines: classroom, hallway, cafeteria, library, auditorium, multi-purpose room, office, and thereby perpetuating the status quo, the $100B of school construction projects in the United States every year offer an opportunity to contribute a solution. By thinking in terms of enrichment and diversity instead of conformity and reproducibility, the next generation of schools can and must support teachers in delivering powerful, engaging learning experiences. By focusing on inclusion and invitation instead of hierarchy and exclusion, the next generation of schools can and must build authentic communities of practice. Not all projects of course invite starting from scratch and rethinking school from the ground up. Nevertheless, every project concerned with delivering long-term value should consider these questions:
What can be done here to expand the diversity of learning environments on this campus? What can be done here to support teachers as, more and more, they are called to deliver engaging learning experiences? What can be done here to enrich experience instead of strip it for management or maintenance simplicity? Finally, what can be done here to build a sense of community and invite students into the lives of the adults around them?
It’s all hands on deck.
References
1. New education construction put in place in the U.S. in 2018, with forecasts from 2019 to 2023, Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/962009/projected-value-of-total-us-educationconstruction/
2. US Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2010). The condition of education 2010 (2010-028). Government Printing Office.
3. Ingersoll, R. (2001). Teacher turnover and teacher shortages: An organizational analysis, American Educational Research Journal 38, 3, 499-534.
4. Ingersoll, R. et al. (2014, April). Seven Trends: The Transformation of the Teaching Force, CPRE Report #RR-80. Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania.
5. Ingersoll, R. et al. (n.d.). How high is teacher turnover, and is it a problem? Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania.
6. Learning Policy Institute. (2017, January). California teacher shortages: A persistent problem, [Fact Sheet]. California School Boards Association.
7. Bakker, A. B. et al. (2000). Burnout contagion processes among teachers, Journal of Applied Social Psychology 30, 11. 2289-2308.
8. Leiter M.P., & Maslach C. (2004). Areas of worklife: a structured approach to organizational predictors of job burnout. In: Perrewe P.L., Ganster D.C. (Eds). Research in occupational stress and well‐being, 3. Elsevier, pp.91-134.
9. Covell, K. et al, (2009). Reducing teacher burnout by increasing student engagement. School Psychology International, 30, 3. 282-290.
10. Haynes, M. et al. (2014). On the path to equity: Improving the effectiveness of beginning teachers Alliance for Excellent Education.
11. Kruse, M. (n.d.). How to beat teacher burnout: Practical tips to try today. Reading and Writing Haven, a blog for educators, https://www.readingandwriting/com/how-to-beat-teacher-burnout-practicaltips-to-try-today/
12. Power, M. (2019, July). Teamwork by design. Educational Leadership Online, 76. http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/jul19/vol76/num09/Teamwork-byDesign.aspx
13. Krabbendam, R. (2018). school. Ludovicus.
Author
Mr. Krabbendam is a K12 studio leader for ACMartin in Los Angeles, CA. His book school (Ludovicus, Boston, 2018) presents a lexicon of learning experiences and environments for the next generation of schools.