Disrupt Your School
Our Process
Disruption: RAS inserts itself into the traditional design process and engages district leadership to determine change readiness and assure overt executive commitment to a modified design process.
Design: RAS curates a team of nationally recognized educational design architects who volunteer their support with a non-transactional, ideas-centered consultation and intense three-day design workshop.
Change: The outcomes of the workshop provide a redefined vision for the project, with the tools to communicate the design concepts to its stakeholders, and the architects responsible for the design of new learning spaces. RAS Design Team members work with the selected architects to convey concepts and objectives that drive the design vision.
Through our engagements, we provide districts with an alternative approach to the traditional design process and tools needed to implement action-oriented outcomes that support change. Our design approach includes:
Integrating curriculum, technology, and space in the design of schools by understanding teaching models and practices for next-generation learning, and the human experience of students and teachers
Using design as a leadership tool
Learning to better utilize available resources
Communicating space designs based on a facilities vision and research
Ensuring an inclusive and collaborative design process
Change by Design
Our national design teams collaborate directly with decision-makers to co-create spaces for next-generation learning skills, including personalized, project-based STEM, STEAM, and Maker-centered programs.
Who we are looking for
The districts that will benefit most from participation in Reimagine America’s Schools understand that students learn in a variety of learning modalities and styles. Reimagine America’s Schools works with schools and educators to ensure that the learning environment aligns with the progressive approaches to education that meet students where they are.
Operate within a culture of innovation. Your district team is eager to find inventive solutions for stubborn and persistent problems. Never satisfied, you constantly apply a process of continuous improvement to ensure that all students realize their full potential.
Open to charting new paths forward to empower and equip all students for a fruitful and fulfilled life ahead. You draw from research and best practice but aren’t afraid to try something different. You may be implementing personalized, project-based, or competency-based learning. Maybe you’re exploring Maker and place-based education or are tinkering with technology in exciting ways. Most importantly, you’re charting these new paths while holding fast to a high bar of academic rigor and expectation.
Invested in and committed to school design as a lever for change. As a district, you recognize that the place where students learn and teachers teach matters. You’re not satisfied with the industrial age, egg-crate model of school design, and you can see the potential for physical space to support learning in new ways.
Willing to commit time and senior staff to fully engage in the Reimagine America’s Schools program. District decision-makers in academics, technology, and facilities need to be at the table to optimize the experience. We know your time is valuable and can guarantee that the experience will be worth your while.
Have a construction program underway or soon-to-be underway. We plan to explore and develop solutions for real design challenges at real schools in your district. Our work together will be tangible and relevant – not theoretical.
Design Charrette / Workshop Content and Typical Schedule
The RAS Design Team of experts convene for a three-day workshop. We request committed participation by the district's Superintendent at two brief strategic meetings and a 5 to 6 member education team at the full charrette. Working directly with the RAS team, the education team should consist of teachers, principals, at least one central office curriculum leader, as well as student and community members, to round out the school design team with essential voices.
Note the Schmidt Grant covers all expenses for the RAS Design Team.
Day 1
Upon arriving in your community, the RAS Design Team meets with district leadership for school tours.
In the afternoon, we kick-off the three-day design thinking charrette and education design workshop with a plenary session that includes district leadership, educators, partners, and other community members.
Reimagine team leaders explain the charrette process and present examples of contemporary school design, illustrating the current best thinking in the design of learning spaces. The district then presents its educational program, and the Superintendent makes brief affirmative comments about charrette participation. After the general session, the school design team and Reimagine team meet for dinner and begin the design process.
Day 2
8:00 a.m. The RAS Design Team engages in a full-day charrette with the school team.
Later in the evening, the group meets for dinner to continue their discussions.
The Reimagine Design Team may continue their efforts late into the evening. Although the school team is invited, participation is not required.
Day 3
8:00 a.m. The RAS Design Team engages in a half-day charrette with the school team.
After lunch, the school team presents a summary of the design process in a plenary session, citing the team's findings and results.
The charrette concludes mid-afternoon, at around 3:00 p.m.
Post-Charrette Activities
Reimagine America’s Schools will be available to assist and support the implementation of the design charrette concepts through the early design stages of the project. We provide support for your educational team and the selected architect(s) utilizing various communications platforms.