iPOINT: Learning from the Outside In
“We can’t expect our graduates to preserve and protect something they don’t understand.” — Wyck Knox, VMDO; architects for Manassas Park Elementary in northern Virginia.
Like other green schools constructed along LEED guidelines, the Manassas campus and buildings are designed to manage the natural forces in which it sits, notably rainwater. Its water harvesting and recycling system allowed the school to use 680% less water in 10 months than the elementary school down the street.
Inside there are no old oak beams or stone blocks salvaged from 19th century buildings. Good old cinder blocks line many walls, holding sloping ceilings and reflective panels and mirrors all of which route the natural light through the building. Sensors tell students and teachers when to open the windows, part of the air quality system that is the first essential according to architect Knox.
“We want to make sure the environment that our children learn in is as healthy as possible,” he says.
In the end, the development and construction of green schools may well be remembered mostly as a catalyst for how a generation came to think of themselves bound to the places they inhabit. That innate sense once permeated our ancestors’ consciousness, of necessity in the long aboriginal millenia before they stopped to plant and build.
Manassas Elementary Principal Stacy Mamon
You can hear it expressed for this different time from the people who have been designing these places, like Wyck Knox or educators like Manassas principal Stacy Mamon who are educating children inside, outside and through what appear to be immersive teaching instruments themselves.
Ms. Mamon acknowledges the importance of managing the energy and its costs, but observes, as you will see in the video below:
“We harness the power of the school when we arm and prepare our students to make those responsible choices outside of their school life.”