What Spirit Shall It Have?

Exploring the heart and soul of school communities

Students decorate benches they constructed for an outdoor classroom.

“The building must not be too beautiful, lest it be a place for children to keep and not for them to use.” — A Letter to the Architects by Frances Presler (1941).

“It must be inspiring — with a beauty that suggest action, not passiveness on children’s part. Yet it must give children the basic feeling of rightness, and fitness, that gives them belief that they too can be, act and create, and that they, their action and creation are needed.” — A Letter to the Architects by Frances Presler (1941).

“A critical pedagogy of place challenges all educators to reflect on the relationship between the kind of education they pursue and the kind of places we inhabit and leave behind for future generations.” — David Gruenewald, The Best of Both Worlds: A Critical Pedagogy of Place.

The building still speaks to children. It says, ‘This is for you. We knew you were coming.’

“How will you know when school matters to kids? They will tell you through their work beyond curricula, in what they create and share with the world, in how they treat each other and what they do to make their communities a better place for others, and in their pursuit of learning not as mandated but as they desire.” — Timeless Learning

It must be a place for living, a place for use, good hard use, for it is to be successively the home, the abiding place for a procession of thousands of children through the years. It must be warm, personal, and intimate, that it shall be to each of these thousands “My school.” — A Letter to the Architects by Frances Presler (1941).

The aggregation of marginal gains in action. Each small, interconnected student project that activates dead spaces contributes to the building and sustaining community. It is impossible to walk around our school and not see the legacy of past students. Care and love are evident around every bend.

“The heart and soul of a school? The humans in it.”

What does opportunity look like? It looks like a place that responds to students, not where students respond to adults. It looks like a place that’s constantly positive, but positive in a real world way. It looks like a place where love and support is always there. — Ira Socol, You must see your school as a home of opportunity.

Creating spaces for collaboration, storytelling and mindfulness was front of mind for students who designed and built a new outdoor classroom for our school.
The recent transformation of dead space into an outdoor classroom that embraces its natural gifts. Project Reimaginate has been a great source of pride for the learners who have contributed to our many projects over the past few years.

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Education blog. "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say" - Flannery O'Connor

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Abe Moore

Education blog. "I write because I don't know what I think until I read what I say" - Flannery O'Connor