If you're starting to think about redesigning spaces, don’t take another step until you have a process. The product cannot proceed the process. Luckily, our journey at ASFM into the redesign of learning spaces coincided with my attending an event with David Jakes. Afterward we spent most of the 2015/16 school year researching and developing teams proficiency in Design before we installed our first space. This included reading of numerous books, pull out days for PD, bringing David to Mexico, and running various groups of students and teachers through numerous design charrettes. We intentionally went slow, listened to understand, and challenged ourselves to be vulnerable to fail loud and fast.
David’s work with St.Thomas Aquinas High School.
At the end of it all, we had collaboratively, with David Jakes, developed the ASFM L2E2 Design Process, a process not just for the redesign of spaces but for thinking differently about the learning experience. Process matters and Design is the creative and problem-solving process of the world, period. Better yet, we have modified it to meet the needs, respect the traditions, and respond to the language of our community. We now are in our second year of redesigning spaces and we can confidently say our process guides us to redesign the learning experiences based on our needs, goals, and collaborative vision for learning.
