miles away from everyone

Miss Dodd is a Newly Qualified Teacher (NQT) and a fairly new arrival at Walker. Her classroom is a long distance from the staff room where colleagues meet to chat or just switch off for a few moments. As Miss Dodd's classroom is so far away, she sometimes doesn't get to see any other adults all day and can feel isolated besides missing out on exchanging ideas and experiences with other teachers. Teachers also have to concentrate for hours at a time - it takes a lot of effort to hold the attention of a class of thirty people and without breaks this is even more difficult.

Problems

staff isolated by the layout of the current school

difficult to integrate as a new teacher

little relaxation time and long distances sometimes make it hard to get to where you need to be on time

Causes

staff room location in relation to all other rooms 

no other locations in the schools for teachers to meet and relax

no system to help staff to meet and share experiences during the working day

Objectives

Inform the architectural brief with design principles and ideas that will ensure that teaching staff are not isolated from there collegues

explore systems of communtication

create more opportunities for teachers to informally share their experiences of their working day

Evaluation of the brief

On one level the ideas and solutions that might come out of this process will inform the building architecture. There is already an idea on paper to create a new building in the space between the main building and the music block. The plan is that this building will bridge the physical gap between parts of the school that are currently isolated. More interesting perhaps than the architecture would be to think about communications between staff. How can the school help teachers to be even more supportive of eachother during the day - and to improve the experience for NQTs. Some teachers will tell you that sometimes they don’t speak to another adult all day. What forms of communication are there? At the moment the senior management team use walkie talkies but this is to support moment-by-moment management of the school. What other opportunites or technologies could be experimented with?



Posted by engine on 02/01