Colorado district groups with Faculty Specialty to furnish and equip a $60M facility from finish to finish.
Jennifer Murtha, principal of Del Mar Academy in Aurora, Colorado, had a imaginative and prescient for what she needed the brand new college’s studying environments to appear like and the way they’d perform.
“I needed a much less institutional feel and look,” she says. “I needed comfortable and onerous seating so that children had decisions.”
Murtha and different leaders from the Aurora Public Colleges turned to Faculty Specialty for assist in bringing this imaginative and prescient to life. Led by Senior Studying Atmosphere Specialist Belinda Engles, Senior Inside Designer Emma Kopatich, and Strategic Account Chief Paula Florian, a workforce of Faculty Specialty professionals designed, furnished, and geared up a brand new college constructing that college students might take pleasure in—one which evokes them to study daily.
“We serve lots of youngsters who’ve grown up in poverty and who’ve had fairly tough occasions of their lives,” Murtha says. “There hasn’t been a brand new college on this neighborhood in 67 years. For them to have a wonderful constructing is very nice. The neighborhood deserves it, our employees deserves it, and positively our youngsters deserve it.”
Welcoming and Inclusive Studying Environments
The brand new Del Mar Academy, which opened in August 2023, serves college students in prekindergarten via seventh grade, with eighth graders being added for the 2025-26 college yr.
In designing the brand new facility, district leaders needed to create trendy studying environments that may be welcoming and inclusive for everybody, with snug seating decisions to accommodate college students with completely different preferences, wants, and studying kinds.
Versatile furnishings empower lecturers to rearrange their school rooms in ways in which help completely different educational methods, whereas quite a lot of seating kinds empowers college students to decide on a method that’s most conducive for them to study.
Fashionable, hands-on studying areas like a STEM lab and a digital arts studio allow college students to study future-ready expertise like coding and digital music manufacturing. “It’s about giving high-quality grade-level instruction to each scholar,” Murtha says.
The college’s center college school rooms embrace tall group tables in order that college students can stand and work in the event that they select. Elementary school rooms embrace conventional chairs and in addition swivel stools for college students who’ve issue sitting nonetheless. Preschool school rooms embrace quite a few center-based actions resembling water tables as a substitute of simply desks and chairs.
A sensory room inside the new college is designed to satisfy the wants of scholars who require extra sensory enter. It’s geared up with a bubble tube and different gadgets that present sensory stimulation. As an example, sensory ground tiles create liquid patterns when college students step on them, and LED furnishings cubes change coloration when college students contact them. This helps college students assert management over their atmosphere, which promotes self-regulation expertise.
The sensory room is used for neurodivergent learners and people who need assistance calming down or regulating their feelings.
“It’s primarily for our special-needs college students, however our occupational therapists pull out college students from basic schooling school rooms who want that stage of consideration as nicely,” Murtha says. “The great thing about this room is that children can select what to do. We don’t inform them what to do in that house.”
Even the cafeteria is designed to offer college students decisions, with conventional cafeteria tables but in addition café- model seating for small teams of two or three kids.
“College students can get their meals after which discover a seat that’s most snug for them,” Murtha notes.
“On the finish of the day, no one needs to eat with 300 folks. This can be a approach to give youngsters slightly extra company.”
Deliberately Designed
The neighborhood’s response to the brand new college facility has been overwhelmingly optimistic. “The primary phrase that everybody says is gorgeous,” Murtha says. “It’s a wonderful college.”
The college’s trendy, trendy studying environments give college students a way of pleasure and self-worth whereas altering their outlook on coming to high school.
“We’ve surveyed our college students over the past yr, and what we’ve heard is: ‘I like my college. I prefer it when my mother and father come to my college,’” Murtha says. “Once I inform our older college students, ‘We spent $60 million on you,’ they positively really feel essential.”
Not solely is the brand new constructing engaging, however it’s extremely practical as nicely. Academics like having the ability to configure the furnishings simply to help completely different groupings and actions. The sensory room helps put together college students to study who’re anxious or who’ve hassle focusing.
“We have been very intentional with our design,” Murtha says.
Working with Faculty Specialty on the design of the brand new college’s studying areas has been “a dream,” she provides, noting: “They’re simply so fantastic. The true testomony of any relationship is what you do when there’s battle. We had some gadgets on again order, issues that Faculty Specialty couldn’t management, they usually have been unbelievable in working to make sure that we opened on time and inside finances. They bent over backward to assist us discover the suitable furnishings.”
She concludes: “I’d suggest them to anybody.”