It's Time We All Sat at the Same Table

Every person involved in designing, building, leading, and supporting schools shapes the experience students have long before they walk through the door.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it: schools should be places where experiences are intentionally created, where someone actually thought about what a student would feel, notice, and still think about years after they've graduated.

That idea was front and center when I had the chance to keynote the Association for Learning Environments (A4LE) Southeast Regional Conference recently. The focus was on how physical environments connect to student success, but what made the day really click for me was the room itself. Architects. Builders. Engineers. Superintendents. Operations folks. Instructional staff. Vendors. Everyone who touches a school building, all in one place.

And pretty quickly, one thing became obvious: we don't talk to each other enough.

There's a habit in education of working in lanes. Architects design. Contractors build. Teachers teach. Operations keeps the lights on. Each piece matters, but they're often developed separately, with the hope that everything will just come together at the end. It usually doesn't, and when it doesn't, students feel it.

Student success grows out of the experience all of those efforts create together. The environment shapes the experience, the experience shapes what students actually take in, and that determines whether school feels meaningful or just mandatory.

The conversations I had throughout the day kept coming back to a shared frustration: we've spent a long time designing and measuring what's easy to see, grades, test scores, completion rates, while paying far less attention to whether students actually feel engaged, curious, or like they belong. People in that room knew something needed to shift, and more importantly, they believed it could.

One thing I pushed on during my time on stage was imagination, specifically how much of it we leave behind as adults. Kids question everything. They build things, take them apart, and try something different without hesitation. Somewhere along the way, most adults trade that instinct in for predictability, and while that makes a certain kind of sense, the world students are growing up in rewards people who can think creatively, see around corners, and generate ideas that didn't exist before. If we want students to develop those skills, the adults designing their environments need to be willing to use those same muscles, and that means being honest about whether what we've always done is actually working.

The discussions after that session were some of the best of the whole conference. People were pushing back, adding to the conversation, sharing their own experiences. There was a real hunger in the room to approach this work differently.

Every decision about a school building is also a decision about a student's experience. The layout of a classroom, the way a hallway feels, whether a space draws you in or just moves you through, all of it adds up. Those choices shape how students see themselves and what they believe is possible for their own lives, and that's worth taking seriously at every stage of the work.

Change is challenging but the rewards are worth the risk. If we choose to see it as an opportunity instead of a burden, there's no limit to what we can create...all of us, together.

If you're ready to start building that kind of collaboration in your district or organization, I'd love to be part of that conversation. Reach out and let's talk about what that could look like for your community.