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Education Dive
Will COVID-19 prevention have positive long-term impact on classroom design?
Students will be greeted by a variety of safety measures when they
return to buildings — some of which can be repurposed for more flexible
environments down the road.
Shawna De La Rosa
July 9, 2020
When schools reopen, students will be greeted by plexiglass barriers,
partitions and new classroom configurations designed to keep them as
far apart as possible. Masks will likely be mandatory, class cohorts
will be small, and movement will be inhibited.
Students will be sectioned off throughout the school, from offices to
auditoriums to stages and gyms. Hallways will be one-directional, if
possible, and passing times will be staggered to reduce traffic.
It won’t be school as usual, but it at least will be school, said
Robert Dillon, director of innovative learning for the School District
of University City in Missouri.
“Everyone has relegated themselves to the fact that there is
going to be less movement in classrooms and in all these learning
spaces,” he said. “Students will be in a desk, in a row, and all of the
best practices that include giving kids choices and agency to move
around is going to be inhibited for the next six to nine months.”
That said, there are some things within a teacher’s control that can help students manage this temporary normal.
“Kids can stand up at their desks, they can sit on top of their desks.
There may be places in the back of the room where students can stand,”
he said. “If they have to sit at the same desk for six hours a day,
they will go mad.”
He also urges teachers to declutter their teaching material and remove
it from classrooms to make more space available for students.
“We need to make a healthy, but also humane, environment for students,” he said.
Common areas emerge as biggest concerns
A survey from the DLR Group, an architecture firm, found the spread of
coronavirus in bathrooms, cafeterias, classrooms and common areas to be
the greatest concerns. The survey queried administrators, teachers,
students and parents. According to the survey, fewer are concerned
about playground interactions and career and technical education rooms,
fine arts areas and maker-spaces.
The survey also found most district-level administrators will adhere to
government guidelines on how and when to reopen, and most will install
plenty of hand-sanitizing stations in high-risk areas.
Raechel French, educational planner with DLR Group, said moveable
furniture, whiteboards and desks will help schools facilitate
separating students.
Meanwhile, technology will be key to keeping them connected. Through
technology, students can communicate from a distance while still seeing
each other across the room.
“Moveable furniture makes it much easier to convert different areas,
such as auditoriums, into new learning spaces,” French said. “It makes
for more flexibility when partitioning off areas for smaller groups of
learners.”
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