Learning Anywhere

I’m back, hoping everyone had a restful and wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. And now on to Christmas!

I see a lot of vacant buildings that would make outstanding learning centers, places for young learners to meet with their learning coaches to create and act on personalized learning plans that improve reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills for each young learner.

Recently I read a post titled “Seven Adaptive Reuse School Sites Continue to Educate,” published in the National Trusts for Historic Preservation’s Saving Places. Although this piece highlights closed schools used for other educational purposes, there are thousands of vacant buildings out there that could serve as a learning center for several hundred young learners. Let’s look at some of the buildings mentioned in the post:

Academy Lofts at Adair Park (Atlanta, Georgia)

“Even decades after its closure, there’s still a lot of creating and learning taking place in the former George W. Adair School. Originally constructed in 1912, the school closed permanently in 1973 and sat vacant for decades. Thanks to a $8.2 million investment, the former school exists today as the Academy Lofts at Adair Park, a live/work space giving local creatives affordable options for both studio space and housing.”

…

Tate Etienne Prevost (TEP) Center (New Orleans, Louisiana)

“Technically, segregation in United States schools was outlawed in 1954. In practice, it took a lot longer. It wasn’t until 1960 that three Black girls integrated McDonogh No. 19 Public School, an elementary school that was sitting empty due to racism and discrimination. Today, the TEP Center, named for those three students – Leona Tate, Gail Etienne, and Tessie Prevost – teaches the people of New Orleans about civil rights and school desegregation. The former school re-opened in its current form in 2022, which includes the offices of the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond and affordable housing for qualifying residents of the Lower 9^th Ward.”

…

Webster Community Center (Pontiac, Michigan)

“The Webster School taught the children of Pontiac, Michigan between 1921 and 2008 and was initially built to support the families who flocked to the region in pursuit of automotive manufacturing jobs. …While Webster was built as an all-white school, it was desegregated in the 1970s.”

“In the following decades, as Pontiac’s population declined, enrollment did as well and the school closed permanently in 2008, after which it sat empty for a decade. In 2016, Micah 6 Community bought the property and is currently transforming the once vacant school into a mixed-use community center where it will be home to small businesses and non-profit organizations, a Head Start program, a fresh food store, and more….”

The next time you are touring downtown spaces and come across a vacant building, imagine what that building might be used for when it comes to personalized learning. How many learning coaches could be employed there? How many young learners, if given the opportunity to spend time there, can become smarter and stronger in their reading, writing, problem-solving, and character development skills? How many other business and social enterprises could share space there with the young learners and their coaches.

Learning doesn’t always have to take place in places called schools. We now have the ability to go almost anywhere to begin a learning cohort, focused on their own individualized learning plan.

All we need is money and willpower.

Til tomorrow. SVB