Another key part of this facility and teaching process will be the connection to community. This facility can connect to the community through farming and selling of produce. Raising of beef and selling beef products that can be produced at the facility. The facility would have a farmers market of sorts and community center.
Parents are another key portion of this learning portion. There are many social issues and stresses that affect a child’s ability to learn. Many of these start at home, especially in low income and single parent homes. A way I would like to handle this issue is to involve parents as much as possible. Summer during harvests, parents and children need to still be involved in the school and farming aspects. This may mean changing the school year to yield more summer involvement. Parents need to come help with harvest and intern, can receive fresh produce for their families. This is a good thing for low income and better off families. Kids also learn an important lesson in raising of food and get to contribute to this end. I would also like to create jobs on site for single mothers, or low income families, or mothers who just want to be more involved. These jobs would help with training of the parents if needed and allow the parents to be more active in their child’s learning. This will also give the children a glimpse into the work place. Parents volunteering will also be a key to the schools success. The school’s involvement in the working ranch will also be a partnership where kids learn about the process of raising livestock, training horses and so on, but also get valuable life lessons from an array of adults and authority figures.
Art – Tall, free feeling space with lots of views, and sensory stimulation. Integration with nature is necessary, but do to art not necessarily being “natural”, this space must point to the mystical, fantasy and other areas of the child’s imagination, not necessarily staged in reality of the natural.
Math – space that allows for group and possibly individual work, more comfortable and at students scale. Shorter ceilings and day lighting, but only singular views and sensory stimulation for better concentration.
Reading – space that allows for group and possibly individual work, more comfortable and at students scale. Spaces for kids to hideaway and read. Shorter ceilings and day light, but only singular views and sensory stimulation for better concentration.
Social Studies – Space for group work, with more stimulation and multiple views.
Science – Space for group work with more stimulation and multiple views. More integration with nature is necessary.
Music – Sound control is important. Day lighting and views out is okay. Group setting.
Free Play - Tall, free feeling space with lots of views, and sensory stimulation. Integration with nature is necessary, but this space must also point to the mystical, fantasy and other areas of the child’s imagination, not necessarily staged in reality of the natural. Engage natural directly.
Library space – group areas with areas for individual use. Comfortable space where child scale is important, but some areas that become taller with more of a free feel, are okay. Daylighting is necessary, but must be controlled, so there is not to much glare.
Kitchen – Scale will be important as students will help with meal preparation to learn practical skills.
Janitorial facilities – scale will be important to allow kids to help with cleaning duties.
Much of my research on learning techniques that work, has brought me to some conclusions. One of the best ways that children seem to learn well, are not singled out for being different, having the wrong answer, or having bad grades, learn to work well with others in a way that they can carry into being an adult, learn to cherish diversity, learn many different possible approaches to a specific problem and learn how to be a leader is the idea of cooperative learning. Now this idea of cooperative learning varies slightly in the different research of educational techniques I have looked at, but for the most part the goals of this type of learning and the benefits remain the same. There is of course some critics of the process, but I believe that the research has shown me that it is beneficial if applied properly and as a inherent part of the learning techniques versus it being something that is applied on occasion as a break from another form of teaching. This technique reminds me a lot of the way we have affinity groups and studio groups and how really I think we learn as much from these people as we do our instructors. I believe some of the keys of this system are:
· It is less teacher focused and not authoritarian in nature.
· It allows the student to explore with little interference or direction given by the instructor
· The students develop not only the answers, such as in a typical authoritarian style of teaching, but they develop the questions as well.
Much of this comes from my research into the Japanese style of learning (the Japanese have a high achievement level in their educational system), the exploratory style of learning, many of the books that I have read on schools and styles of education that work, books on how to teach mathematics, lead to a cooperative style of learning. One such study was on the Railside School, where there was an amazing change in a very diverse, and minority based school. This school was observed for an extended period of time both before and following the implementation of this group learning environment. The school now achieves well over the other two schools that were included in the study. Now when I say cooperative learning, I am talking about a diverse group of students that work together on a regular basis to analyze a problem and discuss different ways to work through the problem. This group than, presents their findings to the rest of the groups where more is learned by seeing how the different groups also worked through the problem. Even if the answer is wrong or the way in which a group worked the problem is not the best, it is still an opportunity to learn. Now, when designing a space for learning around the premise of group learning, there are a number of other things that I wish to look at as well. The design must be able to be manipulated to allow for different subject matter to be learned that require different levels of stimulation or sensory input. The learning space must also allow for small groups to work comfortably but also allow the larger group to assemble. The learning space must provide a level of equality to all groups and individuals that a typical authoritarian classroom where the teacher is the focus at the front of the class cannot. The teacher’s space must be separate enough to allow for the children to feel as though the classroom is theirs, but still allow for a sufficient amount of supervision. For the smaller students, a sense of security is important and should have small child scale break out spaces where a small child can go. These spaces should provide a relief from the larger space, but still remain inclusive of the classroom environment. As the children get older, this is not as necessary. Kindergarten age kids especially need this security. Kindergarten children also need transitional spaces when going outside, or into a more unsecure natural environment.
This slide is looking at another approach to integrating the spaces with the site.
This image is showing the basic concept of the differences in building form and layout as you move up in grade level. The main idea has to do with Paiget's concept of pre-operational (logical thought processes not yet developed) and concrete operational (logical thought processes have developed along with the concept of conservation - where a child can understand that an object or container can hold the same amount of something even if the height, width and depth of the objects are different).
This a new location on my site that I am going to use in lieu of the old. This is mainly do to this site offering more areas of natural environement to be explored. This site is still in the Wyo Herford Ranch, it is just down the road. This image is showing the possible locations for the learning pods for each of the different grade levels. The main reason for separating this is because of kids learning from other kids better if those kids are in their own age group. There is also a tie between the teens and the K-2 grades. This is due to some of the benefits to both groups when a pear/mentor relationship is established. The reason for these age groups, is they are far enough apart in age that there is less chance of a competative or bullying relationship to establish itself.
This diagram is showing some of the spatial adjacencies between the major program elements and the differences in some of the major program components at different grade levels. Following this diagram and further research, I have decided that their is a difference in the way children at grade levels k-2 and 3-6 as well. This work is in progress. 
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