By Sarah Cohen

When Walt Disney announced his dream community for the future in l966, education was a simple equation of the 3 Rs:  readin’, riting’, and ‘rithmatic.  In the last ten years Celebration School has become part of Disney’s new reality in “The City of the Future” outside Orlando, Florida.  Celebration School is a real gem boasting an education system that leads the way world wide for innovation and invention. 

Inventing the future is not easy—even for the man who gave us Mickey Mouse and a unique way of seeing our world over the last fifty years.  One of the futurists capable of catching the wave Disney Development Corporation set as a standard is Franklin Hill, Ph.D., of Bellevue, Washington.  He worked closely with hundreds of educators and national experts.  From that, five significant strategies set Celebration School apart from anything else, anywhere else. 
 
• Small Schools within Schools:  There were only 400 high school students within this 1200 + enrollment K-12 facility.
• Academies:  Small neighborhood learning environments unified, integrated, and personalized learning.
• Integrated Curriculum:  Blending programs such as science and the arts with core subjects of English, math, and social studies.
• Offsite Learning:  Integrated on-site curriculum blended with off-site practical applications to business, medical facilities, and Epcot. 
• Special Education:  Mainstreamed K-12 Programs into the neighborhoods.

 “Visionary educators saw the emerging educational uniqueness of Celebration in terms of instruction and design,” says Hill.  “Unfortunately many school districts nationally thought the ideas applied only to the special circumstances of a Disney-promoted experience.  They were very wrong!”

After Celebration School, Hill was challenged to come up with facility applications that could easily translate to more mainstream public school situations.  He first focused on Small Schools as a key issue to reduce anonymity and more closely bond teachers to students.   Promoting “learning academies,” such as the schools-within-a-school technique, the design subdivides large campuses into smaller student-centered learning modules.

This graphic represents a typical double-loaded corridor as seen in most high schools across America.

“This is how high schools have been designed for years,” says Hill.  “Properly conceived, it can create the same flexible ideas of integration, neighborhoods and resource programs as promoted in the Celebration School.” 

This graphic shows how flexible structural systems, proper placement of science, and alternative classroom configurations can lead to team resource areas, integrated special education, seamless technology, and integrated curriculum among technology education, science, and core subjects. 

Dennis Cecchini is the Director of Educational Facility Design at MHTN Architects in Salt Lake City.  Working with Hill as the futurist planner, “We used the structural flexibilities hallway concept in the West Jordan High Schools in the mid 1990s and later in several other high schools in our region.   Strategic affordable flexibility is incredibly important.”  Locating science laboratories adjacent flexibly built classrooms was critical.

Another trend Hill emphasizes is blending public school activities during the day with the business community, thus focusing on the practical problem-solving skills needed by tomorrow’s workplace,”

Addressing this issue, Hill developed the Learning Atrium where science, technology education, and core curricular subjects integrate around a shared-use learning space.  Businesses can easily access the location from the outside.  With such easy access, the space can also be used for summer programs to include elementary and middle school students from elsewhere in the district.

Hill first employed the Learning Atrium in the mid ’90s.  Since then he has suggested this idea to many progressive high schools like the Enloe “Magnet High School of America” in Raleigh, NC.  The graphic below shows how the Learning Atrium can function as a multiple activity space integrating science, technology, and career education with core subject general classrooms.

Jyoti Sharma, Director of Facility Planning in Raleigh’s Wake County Schools feels the Learning Atrium is worth a try.  Dr. Hill presented the concept as part of his “Futures Workshop” planning process to look at national trends and “raise the bar” on learning.  “We plan to blend the atrium with our already established business partnership with the Wake County Medical Center nearby.  This will make learning practical, relevant, and work oriented,” says Sharma.

For more authentic educational planning, Hill promotes off-site business connections.  “Allowing students to depart to places of business can provide a more authentic learning experience, more practical uses of technology and even lessen the demand for computer-based classroom instruction in favor of off-site learning “classroom” opportunities,” says Hill.

While planning the Brookfield Zoo K-12 Immersion School near Chicago, the program is considering an on-site K-12 learning facility that interfaces directly with Zoo exhibits, zoo research programs, and even distance learning connections to a Florida-based marine laboratory.  “Offsite cross-correlated and integrated learning is the wave of tomorrow”, says Hill.

Trends are not only large-scale such as academies and the Atrium.  School design must also include a better understanding of detailed activities inside the classroom itself.  Multi-screen/multimedia learning combined with sophisticated science laboratory peripherals enhance experimentation, integration of technology, and cross-curricular instruction of social science and problem-solving activities.

The graphic above shows a multiscreen/multimedia science lab.  One screen can project a wireless recorder real-time data collection questionnaire related to analyzing behavior patterns of penguins.  The middle screen school is a video of penguins exhibiting those behavior traits being documented.  The far right screen displays an out-of-state penguin expert.

“For the first time, we can use real time data analysis with visual observation skills to document science-related information in a whole systems approach to learning,” says Hill.  “This is incredibly powerful and affordable for most schools across the country.”

“Science labs,” says Hill, ”when properly planned using multiple technologies and connecting to Learning Atriums can be well-sized and function at about 1,250 square feet.  Over-sizing the science space with disproportionate dimensions can actually create more expensive space which is less efficient,” says Hill.

Misunderstood and unappreciated at the time, the Celebration School has instead led the way for education change in the last ten years. 

With Hill’s compelling contribution as a futurist to this and many other projects, new strategies in thinking will continue to shape and change trends for schools across the country over future decades.

Teachers are encouraged to write Franklin Hill with photographs and their own research as it applies to confirming or modifying the information contained in this article.   Examples can be sent to mailto:Frank@Franklinhill.com or e-mail him at his company’s website: Franklinhill.com.  

Franklin Hill, Ph.D. of Bellevue, Washington, is a international educational design consultant with 25 years of experience with the issues discussed in this article.   He has professional qualifications in both education and design with over 300 schools to his planning credit including the Disney Celebration School, Enloe High School, Brookfield Zoo School, partnership schools with IBM, plus corporate learning facilities.   He was a facilities administrator of a 100,000-pupil district and vice president of an architectural firm before opening his own national practice in 1987.

Sarah Cohen is a freelance writer on education related topics.