The newly renovated Fayetteville High School in Fayetteville, Ark., was designed to accommodate 3,000 students. But educators didn鈥檛 want the building to feel so massive on the inside that students became just another face in the crowd.
鈥淭he idea was that because it was gonna be 3,000 students, they didn鈥檛 want the school to feel too impersonal,鈥� said Jim French, the global K-12 sector leader at the DLR Group, the architectural firm tasked with renovating the school near the University of Arkansas.
The old facility was stripped down to its steel beams. It was then clothed anew in metal panels, glass walls, and local stone.
鈥淲e tried to stay away from the building looking like an institute,鈥� French said. 鈥淭his is more of an iconic building that looks more like corporate headquarters.鈥�
鈥淭he students wanted to feel like they were going to a real workplace,鈥� he continued. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 an important piece of the story.鈥�
Inside the rebuilt 353,381-square-foot facility, which cost $96 million to renovate, students learn in pods made up of four classrooms apiece. A team of teachers oversees each pod so that they can easily keep track of students, and build more meaningful relationships with them.
鈥淲hat we don鈥檛 want to happen is鈥攋ust because we are a large school鈥攖hat kids would get lost in the shuffle,鈥� said Principal Chad Scott.
鈥極pen Project Labs鈥�
The classrooms feature movable walls with double doors that open up into common spaces, known as open project labs, where teachers from different classrooms and other groups can collaborate and gather.
鈥淚t provides space for multiple groups to gather,鈥� explained science teacher Linda Stocker. 鈥淲ith these spaces, teachers are afforded more flexibility in the strategies and methods used in their curriculum.鈥�
鈥淔or example,鈥� she added, 鈥減hysics teachers use the space for lab experiments, which require more space than is available in their classroom lab.鈥�
She also pointed out an open space between the second- and third-floor open project labs that allows for physics experiments involving gravity, forces, and the like.
鈥淭eachers use this space for Socratic circle discussions, large group activities, autonomous workstations, gallery walks, guest speakers, and one of the open project labs is set up for aquaponics,鈥� Stocker said.
French, the architect, noted that while the classrooms facilitate teacher collaboration, they are still traditional enough for teachers who want to teach independently to do so.
鈥淚t鈥檚 really hard sometimes to get the district to make changes within their school designs, because they鈥檙e afraid of failure,鈥� French said. 鈥淭hey don鈥檛 want to live with something that doesn鈥檛 work. What we鈥檝e tried to do with this school is we tried to build half the classrooms very similar or on a traditional arrangement, so if a teacher didn鈥檛 want to be highly collaborative with other teachers, they don鈥檛 have to.鈥�
