I want to take a moment to highlight a few particulars in my program that influence and enrich the project as a whole.
Library/Resource Room
The library is available not just to students, but to community members as well. It the main outreach center for community members who want to extend the habitat network of their community (as I described here under “Connectivity”).
The library is more than just a place to check out books. It is a place to research, to get resources to facilitate learning. There are offices for partner organizations, such as the Audubon Society of Portland’s Backyard Habitats program, who can offer direct information and guidance to students and community members alike. There could be a seed library for native plants, and an interface for applying for “Treebates,” an underutilized opportunity for Portland residents to receive rebates for planting trees on their property.
Furthermore, this neighborhood is at least three miles from a public library in the Multnomah County library system. The school library could easily become a site for students and local residents to place holds and pick up materials from the public library system.
Student Vegetable Garden
In a somewhat tongue-in-cheek move, I am determined to have the vegetable garden on the second floor, as part of the green roofs. An important, and sometimes overlooked, part of ecological and environmental education is the role that humans play in their environment. Without thinking about it too hard, most urban dwellers would probably consider farms and vegetable gardens to be “natural” spaces– though in fact, they are hardly that. Our agricultural landscapes are often highly controlled monocultures, unsuitable for any species to thrive unless raised there by humans. Though agriculture is undeniably critical to human survival, I believe it is important to acknowledge and understand humankind’s influence on the greater landscape.
Small Learning Communities
As I described previously, my approach to classroom organization and function was inspired by the newest edition of The Language of School Design by Prakash Nair and Randall Fielding. SLC’s are divided by grade (6th, 7th, and 8th) and correspond to one of the stages of succession occurring across the site (prairie, oak savanna, and fir forest), using ecological succession as a metaphor for student’s process of learning and growing up.
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