Giving Compass' Take:

• Stephen Noonoo shares how teachers and schools are successfully redesigning their classrooms to better serve students' needs. 

• How can philanthropy support student-centered design? What other elements of the school expierence can be redesigned to better serve students? 

• Learn how personalized learning is customizing education for students.

When educators first consider redesigning learning spaces, they might immediately conjure up mental images of free-flowing Starbucks lounges or something out of the Cult of Pedagogy blog’s Classroom Eye Candy series. Yet the impulse to tackle aesthetics first is often premature, according to Rebecca Hare, who teaches art and design in St. Louis and has served as a design consultant for various schools.

The trick to creating an effective learning space is to build in a certain amount of agility when designing it, Hare says. Teachers can start simply, with the overall goals they have for their classrooms, the types of projects they want to do and the mindset they want to instill in students. “Really, you do a lot of work in the beginning and then choosing the furniture is quite simple,” she explains.

As for building in agility upfront, that comes in handy later, after students have gotten a chance to experience the space and figure out which elements are working and which need tweaking. When she goes into schools as a consultant, she hopes for one thing: “An educator who's going to feel comfortable enough to give power to the kids to say, ‘Hey, is this working? Are you able to learn this way? How can we design this better?’ Because then the kids have control and their voices are heard and the space functions completely differently.”

Read the full article about classroom design by Stephen Noonoo at EdSurge.