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player ready...There are multiple ways to describe the Learning Commons into which Central Elementary School students will dive next September.
It will be a collaborative learning space. It will be a fun place to go and someplace where you can, in the words of Wilmette School District 39 Superintendent Raymond Lechner, “get some really meaningful learning done.”
One thing you shouldn’t call it is “just a library,” officials said.
For Central Principal Becky Littmann and her staff, it will be the learning hub for her kindergarten through fourth-grade students, a place beyond the classroom where they can learn and exhibit the four C’s – heirs to the three R’s – that emphasize creativity, critical thinking, collaboration and communication.
For District 39, the $1.1 million project to remodel Central’s existing library and several surrounding classrooms into a new and flexible format marks the first step in providing a learning commons for all six district schools within the next six years. Construction begins after the end of this school year, and the building will be ready for students in September.
It’s the culmination of three years of research, first by the district’s community review committee and then by Central educators themselves. The project is also the continuation of a single-room learning commons pilot financed in part by the district’s educational foundation.
Now Central’s PTA is taking on one of its biggest fundraising challenges in years, PTA President Robin Cook said: raising $100,000 for learning commons costs not covered by the district, such as furniture and other learning commons materials.
Cook and other PTA officials joined Littmann, Lechner and Central staff on Feb. 11 to present the learning commons project and the PTA fundraising kick-off to PTA members and other parents.
They did so with the help of Chicago based designer Trung Le, who walked listeners through his plan, and with anecdotal information from Lake Forest educators about the successful middle school learning commons in which they work.
Littmann told listeners that her research team visited learning commons in middle and junior high schools, including centers in Des Plaines, Glenview and Lake Forest, to see if the concepts could translate successfully to an elementary school.
They decided it not only could do so, but that it needed to do so, she said before the presentation.
“The ‘four C’s’ cannot happen overnight. We should not be waiting until middle school and junior high to introduce our kids to those concepts,” she said. “We feel it’s our job to introduce them as early as possible so they can be successful.”
Changing one of the key learning spaces in the school only makes sense in the face of District 39’s curriculum and technology modernization efforts, she said. Braiding technology usefully into a child’s education is hard to do in traditional classrooms, she suggested.
“I was at a workshop with other principals and the speaker put up a message in black and white that had a very awkward truth. She said, ‘Our old classrooms were created to control students.’ Now we’re creating not only a new space, but creating and planning the ways we want to use it,” Littmann said. “This will not be aimed at controlling students, but actually helping them learn.”
Impressed with what her team saw at Lake Forest’s Deerpath Middle School, Littmann brought two teachers involved with that school’s learning commons to Central’s kick-off event.
The first thing librarian and media specialist Patti Fleser wanted the audience to know about The Cube, as Deerpath’s learning commons is called, is that it’s not a quiet place.
“But it’s very creative,” she said as she and Laura Montgomery, Deerpath’s instructional technology consultant, showed listeners a video of a typical day in the space.
Planners hope the same creative educational synergies will happen in Wilmette.
Students will still have access to books and other traditional library offerings. But they’ll also be able to make use of presentation areas for group learning and presentations.
They will be able to record and film in a production studio, physically build or tinker with items, using knowledge they’ve gained in class, or make use of a an area (nicknamed the “genius bar”) where they can use their iPads, laptops and other wireless devices to study and create works of art, science, literature and more.
The commons will also have small areas where students can work one on one or in small groups with their teachers, or simply have quiet time to study and read by themselves.
Le, the award-winning Chicago-based head of Wonder By Design who was chosen to design the learning commons, started the process at the beginning of this school year by working closely with teachers and students.
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“We tried to envision a series of spaces that would actually allow all of the four C’s,” he said.
“There has been nothing like this effort since I’ve been here at Central,” Cook said after the presentation, pointing out that it may be the first public elementary school learning commons in Illinois. “The thing we’re challenged by is to get the message out – this is not just an upgraded library. This is so much more for our kids.”
To learn more about the Central School learning commons project, visit the school’s website.
To contact the school PTA, visit centralschoolpta.org.