Honoring the previous, whereas additionally embracing the longer term, is usually a difficult stability. With the assistance of College Specialty, Killeen Excessive College in Killeen, Texas, has navigated this problem completely in a latest renovation challenge, with newly furnished educational areas that place each college students and lecturers for achievement.
Initially constructed within the Nineteen Sixties, Killeen Excessive College expanded within the Eighties, however since then not a lot had modified in nearly 40 years. Because the group’s rising inhabitants outpaced what the constructing may accommodate, district officers took the chance not simply to increase the power even additional however to modernize it as effectively.
As a part of a $100 million bond situation, Killeen Excessive College added new high quality arts and CTE lecture rooms designed to organize college students for thrilling careers, in addition to new furnishings to help future-ready instruction. Building began in 2020 and completed through the spring 2023 semester.
“We needed our constructing to final for one more 40 years or extra,” says Dean of Instruction Matt Widacki. “The way in which a classroom features at this time may be very completely different from the Eighties. Greater than anything, it was about modernizing for the longer term.”
School rooms Designed for Collaborative Drawback-Fixing
Previous to the renovations, many of the college’s lecture rooms had old school desk-chair combos that didn’t successfully help lively studying pedagogies.
“They took up a number of house and weren’t conducive to giving lecturers the pliability they wanted for delivering dynamic instruction,” Widacki says.
Killeen officers labored with College Specialty Senior Studying Setting Specialist Robin Wilburn to design trendy lecture rooms geared up with particular person seating and desks on casters that simply could possibly be moved round and organized into versatile groupings of from two to 6 college students at a second’s discover, relying on the character of the day’s studying exercise.
“Instruction may be very completely different at this time,” Widacki explains. “It was ‘sit and get.’ Now, there’s much more experiential studying. College students work in teams to unravel issues with their friends, as an alternative of working in isolation. It’s extra just like the problem-solving you see in the true world.”
He continues: “We want college students to have the ability to sit individually and take a take a look at, but additionally to work collaboratively and never lose useful educational time in making that transition. The furnishings we use performs an enormous function in enabling that efficiently.”
Fashionable CTE Studying Environments
Profession and technical training is one other essential side of a contemporary, future-ready training, and the newly renovated Killeen Excessive College constructing additionally consists of new lecture rooms and hands-on labs designed to assist college students be taught important profession abilities.
As an illustration, a chosen robotics room is furnished with tall stools and tables for designing and constructing remote-controlled automobiles and different robotic units. The tables are on casters to allow them to be moved to the edges of the room simply, Widacki says—opening up flooring house for college students to check their creations.
What’s extra, the college’s prison justice program now has a specifically designed courtroom surroundings, full with an elevated dais the place the choose sits, a podium for testifying, and tables for the prosecution and protection. The room is linked to different lecture rooms through a closed-circuit TV system, so college students can watch reside as their friends conduct trials within the house.
Supporting Pupil and Instructor Success
Because of the college’s modernization challenge, Killeen lecturers are capable of put together college students for the roles of the longer term extra successfully—and college students can be taught in snug environments that help extra lively and collaborative studying.
“College Specialty has been nice to work with,” Widacki notes. Not solely did College Specialty assist design and furnish the college’s trendy new studying environments, however the firm additionally helped hold the challenge on schedule amid a number of transferring components.
“Our college students and group are actually happy with the newly renovated facility,” Widacki concludes. “We have been conscious of preserving our traditions, as a result of it’s essential for us to honor the previous— however we’ve been in a position to try this inside an incredible new house.”
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