The townwide discussion of the proposed new elementary school has generally focused on two things: the cost of the project and the problems of the current building. That’s not surprising, given the high price tag of the first and the leaky roof and lurking mold of the second.
Some other questions about the project have been given shorter shrift in public discussions. When the educational program for the new school has been mentioned in public discussion, it has most often been to remind people that without a plan for learning improvements, the project would not be eligible for the $18 million grant that Harvard has been promised by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). But the effects of the building on student learning have been a constant theme in discussions at School Building Committee meetings over the past year and more.
The proposed building is, after all, a school. What are the educational improvements planned for the new building, and what are their benefits, besides making the project eligible for state funds?
Near the beginning of a long document called the MSBA Preliminary Design Program Report that the School Building Committee sent to the MSBA a year ago is an 18-page description of how teaching and learning work now at Hildreth Elementary School and how they could be improved. The document describes the goals for improving education at HES, from keeping the current small class sizes to increasing wireless access and expanding project-based learning. It can be found at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxY4015oGZJjM09kSmZSN0h5ZFE/view.
Learning in groups and one-on-one
In describing the improved educational features of the proposed school, teachers and administrators have emphasized the increasing need for children to have 21st-century skills. The 19th-century skills made memorable as the three R’s—reading, writing, and ’rithmetic—are still fundamental. But educators now also talk about the three C’s—collaboration, creativity, and communication—as central skills for today’s workplace.
One major change in education over the past 30 years has been the increased emphasis on students working in groups. The floor plan for the proposed building shows small spaces throughout the classroom wings where students can work on group projects, on their own but still within the view of their teacher. Such projects more closely replicate the way kids will be likely to work after they finish school, educators say.
Math and reading specialists can also use these spaces to work with a few students or one-on-one. So can speech therapists and other specialists. School administrators have said that having spaces for these services next to regular classrooms will minimize disruption and maximize the time on task for students.
In the existing HES building, these specialists often share a room with as many as four other teachers with small groups. This increases distractions for students who may already have trouble focusing.
What is an engineering lab?
The HES education plan also emphasizes project-based learning, which connects to another feature of the proposed new school: the room variously called an engineering lab, makerspace, or innovation lab. It is about the same size as the current computer lab, which is no longer needed now that students work with laptops rather than desktop computers.
When drawings of the proposed school first appeared, many people expressed skepticism about the glass-walled space above the library/media center that was described as a makerspace, suggesting it might be an educational fad or frill. But teachers responded that it would be a place where kids learn by doing—a method that experts have advocated for more than a century, but which has often proved harder to practice than to preach.
At the School Committee’s April 23 meeting, third-grade teacher Lauren Crittendon said she had seen an explosion of interest in the engineering aspect of science education in her 12 years of teaching at HES. She noted how much students already enjoyed hands-on learning. As the science team leader, she described a range of activities that helped students learn scientific principles. Third-graders tested different bubble wands to see which kind worked best; then they designed their own wands, printed them out on the 3D printer, and tested them. Fifth-graders learned about simple machines such as levers, screws, and pulleys. They also experimented with force and motion, using rubber bands to propel cars.
Crittendon said engineering combines well with other branches of science, as when students built a device to measure wind speed as part of weather study. Having visited the makerspace at the Russell Street School in Littleton, Crittendon said such a space at HES would allow for more hands-on activities in the science curriculum.
Why have a learning stair?
Another feature that puzzled many residents when they first looked at renderings of the proposed school was a wide stairway with what looked like giant-sized steps, right next to a more conventional stairway in the open center area of the building. As HES Principal Josh Myler has explained at some of the public forums, this “learning stair” can be used as a seating area where all the students in one grade can gather to hear an outside speaker, see a film, or present their own projects in front of their peers. The stair is next to the library area, so students may choose to just sit and read there during free time.
With about 80 to 100 students in a grade, the stair area is a better size for such a gathering than the alternative of setting up chairs in the gym, which is designed for much larger audiences. And in planning the proposed school, the building committee ruled out an auditorium as too costly. In effect, Myler said, the learning stair functions like a small auditorium, but at less expense.
Light, air, lunch, and learning
Since the earliest phases of the project, the School Building Committee has emphasized that a new school must have more natural light and better ventilation than the current one. Both factors have a positive effect on learning, according to studies described by architect Emily Grandstaff-Rice (and corroborated in an April 13 letter to the Press, “Peer-reviewed studies find physical environment critically influences academic outcomes”).
When the building committee and interested residents toured other new schools in the area last year, one principal mentioned that there had been a surprising drop in absences due to illness since the new school had opened. He attributed the change to better ventilation and healthier building materials than in the old school.
And while a cafeteria is not usually thought of as a learning space (except perhaps for social skills such as sharing), the education plan points out the difficulty of scheduling six separate lunch periods, beginning two hours after students arrive and extending well into the afternoon. Having a larger cafeteria so that all students could have lunch closer to the middle of the day would be healthier, the education plan says. Lunch might not be a topic on the state’s standardized tests, but parents and teachers know that a hungry kid will probably not focus on how to multiply fractions.
