Rethinking School Spaces and Structures to Maintain Proper Distancing Amid COVID-19
- By Cindy Eggebrecht-Weinschreider
- 07/01/20
The centers for disease control and prevention
(CDC) guidelines for how schools and other organizations can
safely reopen make the following recommendations for maintaining
social distancing and limiting the sharing of materials
within schools:
- Pursue virtual activities and events in lieu of field trips, student
assemblies, special performances, school-wide parent
meetings, and spirit nights if possible. Promote social distancing
of at least six feet between people if events are held, and
limit group size to the extent possible.
- Limit nonessential visitors, volunteers, and activities involving
external groups of people as possible.
- Space student desks and seating at least six feet apart when
feasible. Turn desks to face in the same direction, or have students
sit on only one side of tables, spread at least six feet
apart.
- Close communal-use spaces such
as dining halls and playgrounds
if possible; otherwise, stagger
their use and disinfect them in
between uses.
- Have students eat meals in classrooms.
Serve individually plated
meals, or encourage students to
bring their own meals from home where possible.
- Stagger arrival and drop-off times or locations by cohort, or
put in place other measures to limit direct contact with parents
as much as possible.
- Keep each child’s belongings separated from others’ and in
individually labeled containers, cubbies, or areas.
- Have enough supplies to minimize the sharing of high-touch
materials to the extent possible (art supplies, math manipulatives, science equipment, etc.), or limit the use of supplies and
equipment to one group of children at a time and clean and
disinfect these items between uses.
- Avoid sharing electronic devices, books, games, and other
learning aids. Students might need their own bin of materials
that they use for learning — and these materials will need to
be cleaned regularly.
Following these recommendations will force K-12 leaders to
be creative in how they set up classrooms and student groupings,
as space will become an issue in maintaining proper distancing.
For instance, spacing students six feet apart will mean
the average classroom can accommodate no more than 12 to
15 students at a time. K-12 leaders might need to rethink the
design of school spaces and/or schedules to solve this challenge.
“Create strategies to de-densify existing spaces, rethink underutilized
space, and incorporate structures to support hybrid
setups for digital and physical use,” advises Meghan Webster
and Elaine Lockwood Bean at Gensler, a global design and architecture firm.
As you rethink the design of educational spaces and structures
to keep your communities safe and healthy when schools
reopen, here are some possible strategies and issues to consider.
Use a hybrid approach that combines
face-to-face and online instruction
Instead of having all students return to school at once, you
might consider using a hybrid approach to learning that combines
face-to-face and online instruction.
For instance, you might have students attend school in
person two days a week and learn online three days a week.
Half the students in each class could attend on Mondays and
Wednesdays, and the other half could attend on Tuesdays and
Thursdays. On Fridays, you could have everyone working from
home online while custodial staff deep clean the building.
Another approach might be to have students alternate weeks
of face-to-face and online instruction. One cohort could attend
school for weeks one and three of the month and learn remotely
from home during weeks two and four, and the other cohort
could follow the opposite schedule.
One advantage to this weekly rotation model is that it
involves less mixing of students; the same group of students
would be in each classroom all week, and then the room could
be thoroughly cleaned over the weekend before the next group’s
arrival. However, a downside is that students wouldn’t see their
teachers or peers for a full week at a time.
However you decide to handle it, a hybrid approach to learning
would address the population density challenge by cutting
in half the number of students in the building each day, making
it easier to follow distancing protocols. Because educators
and students already have experience in teaching and learning
remotely, moving to a hybrid learning model should not be as
disruptive as it might have been before COVID-19 emerged.
If you choose to adopt a hybrid learning approach, aside
from the question of how frequently students will attend school,
you’ll have to figure out how to make the best use of students’
and teachers’ time both online and for in-person instruction.
Here are some questions to think about:
- What is the teacher’s biggest value as
a classroom presence? How you answer
this question could help you structure
in-class time in a way that leverages
the teacher’s value most effectively.
- How will direct instruction occur? For
instance, will you have students receive
instruction from the teacher while
they’re in class, and then practice or apply
what they’ve learned while they’re
at home? Will you employ a “flipped”
approach to learning, in which students
learn content from home by reading or
watching videos and then apply these lessons in school under
the teacher’s guidance? Will students who are working online
join their in-school peers through live video conferencing
as the teacher is giving direct instruction in class? There are
many possible ways to approach this, and the method you
choose will depend on your educational philosophy and perhaps
what makes the most sense for each lesson.
- How will you structure activities so that teachers aren’t doing
twice as much work, teaching one cohort of students in
class during the school day and then addressing the needs of
the online cohort in the evening? How will you ensure a fair
workload for everyone involved?
Take advantage of non-instructional
spaces for learning
Another way to reduce the density of students in classrooms
might be to make use of non-instructional spaces for learning.
With a little planning and ingenuity, K-12 leaders could convert
spaces such as gymnasiums, auditoriums, cafeterias, media
centers, outdoor spaces, and unused areas
of the school into makeshift classrooms
to accommodate students who are spread
at least six feet apart.
Of course, reconfiguring non-instructional
spaces for learning will be much
simpler if schools have flexible, agile
furniture that is designed for easy manipulation,
such as tables and desks on
casters and other furnishings that can be
moved around and set up in various arrangements.
Converting non-instructional spaces
into classrooms so that students can
spread out raises a number of logistical challenges. One of the
most obvious is that teachers can’t be in two places at once. If a class of students is distributed across multiple spaces, how will
the teacher provide instruction to all students? How will teachers
monitor students and ensure their safety?
One option might be to have students receive direct instruction
in a large room where they can spread out, such as the auditorium
or media center, and then move to different locations in
the school to work independently. However, if you take this approach,
the large instructional space would need to be cleaned
and disinfected before other students could use it — and you
would need a way to monitor students as they work in various
locations, such as by deploying teacher’s aides for this purpose.
Another approach might be to have students seated in a second
room participate in class online by using the same video
conferencing platform they’ve been using for remote learning.
In the interest of fairness, the two groups of students could rotate
every week, so students would take part in class online one
week and in person the next.
This would differ from the other hybrid learning model discussed
earlier in two key ways: (1) All of the online learning
would be synchronous in nature, so that everyone in the class
would be experiencing the same lessons and activities at the
same time, and (2) it would provide more structure and support
than having students learn from home. But again, you would
need to have a teacher’s aide or other adult in each room with
students.
Besides the challenge of how to teach, monitor, and support
groups of students in different locations with a single teacher,
here are three other issues to consider when repurposing non-instructional
spaces for learning.
- Do you have wireless connectivity throughout every area of
your building? If not, how will you ensure that students can
get online? You could set up mobile hotspots in areas lacking
WiFi coverage, for instance.
- How will you equip these spaces for learning? Consider what
teaching and learning will look like when schools reopen, and
plan the needs of each space accordingly. For example, you’ll
probably want to incorporate some kind of writing surface
that is large enough for all students to see. A mobile whiteboard
that can easily be wheeled from one location to another
might be an ideal solution.
- How will you ensure that electronic learning tools and devices
have enough power? You might need to supplement the
existing power supplies within non-instructional spaces with
mobile power strips or outlets.
Plan carefully
Reopening schools in a way that allows for social distancing
will require a great deal of planning. As you’re thinking
through all of the many issues involved, make sure you get
input from all stakeholder groups, including union representatives.
By working together as a school community, you can
come up with solutions for reimagining school spaces and structures
that will work for everyone involved.
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2020 issue of Spaces4Learning.