Feel of the Future

What do joy, nostalgia, and sadness feel like when you experience them at the same time? They feel like my walk through Royal Oak Middle School this last Saturday evening at the Open House.

As a premiere, it was well done. Administration, school board, teachers, parents, students, former Dondero teachers, even the mayor were in attendance.  Every floor had tables with volunteers offering information and food.  Videos, clothing, and other historical reproductions were on sale.

And the building itself is simply extraordinary. For so many years, those of us who loved Dondero begged for it to be preserved, restored.  The 1927 architecture is preserved (and even some of our old favorite “features” like the Stairway to Nowhere!), and the changes largely make great sense.  The cafeteria is no longer a mismatched labyrinth, the Media Center walls have been adjusted to create work areas, teachers have plenty of planning spaces, and the small school feeling has been preserved by isolating the grades on different floors.  But I don’t want to write about the changes.  Read these elsewhere.

It’s frankly odd to think about.  My grandfather was part of the first graduating class from the building; it was there that he met my grandmother.  I still remember believing in the first few weeks of my teaching in Royal Oak (that’s 1992) that it was the place I would spend the rest of my career, gladly, not just because the people were amazing, but the building—as ill-maintained as it had been—was homey, comfortable.

So I was smiling most of the night.  After all, as I spoke with Ms. Boyer, a couple of the middle school students, and many of the teachers, I noticed the same comfort, already the same pride, rapidly the growing sense of ownership. And, if ROMS does it right, the building will be used as much for a community space as a middle school.

My own classroom space at Dondero High School has been converted to a 7^th grade science lab.  It’s
completely unrecognizable. The solid oak trim, window casings, cabinetry, and hardwood floors I had for so many years attempted to preserve (and had been so often admonished to by the building administrators) have completely vanished.  I wonder where it went.

The Royal Oak Middle School building has a foot in each space, past and future; there was no better choice for the district to make in its restoration.  I won’t pretend I’m not nostalgic: fourteen of my favorite years as a teacher were in those hallways.  But the teachers and students there have a home with history.

Can the new ROHS do the same?  The building plainly lacks the architectural personality of the ROMS site.  As construction continues (and continues), we need to remember that the goals of restoration of a 1950s property simply aren’t the same.  But this does not mean that Royal Oak High School need accept any compromise in attention, that it won’t be the jewel of the district which ROMS has become. Principal Greening is right to demand that our school get equal priority.

The high school doesn’t merely need quality infrastructure but the feel of quality for its residents. It needs the feel of ownership, the feel of comfort, the space where students and teachers want to spend time, not merely flee from at 2:30.  It needs the feel of future.

 

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P.S.  What specifically would I want to see happen?  Many of these are already in the works, but pointedly few to none are part of the bond issue.  They are up to us to create for ourselves, I fear:

• Serious landscaping of the entire property with an enduring plan for maintenance.  The landscaping should include seating and gathering spaces of comfort and semi-privacy.
• The re-tasking of interior spaces to suit the needs of student socializing and group meetings.  Currently there are few to none.  There is, for instance, no commons area outside of wide hallways, and the courtyards are hardly year-round (and two are completely inaccessible to students in any event).  We need to build/create two or three different spaces for seating, relaxing, complete with options for entertainment, formal and informal.  This would include a redesign of our food service.  [Just a thought:  we have the space.  Could we place an independent ROHS-only coffee/snack shop on the property?]
• The re-tasking of the multiple cubicle and office spaces in the building. Many are currently used for teacher workspaces (quite necessary as teachers are without classroom space during their planning times), but some are—to be kind—designated for odd or mysterious purposes, ill-suited to usable space for students or teachers. [Just one example of the need:  When I had a student recently want to discuss a sensitive issue with me privately, we could find no place where we could sit to talk about it.] Some of the cubicles could be combined to make more productive spaces.  While we’re at it, let’s eliminate the claustrophobia and isolation and eliminate most of the interior window shades in the building.
• And, while we’re at it, let’s start plans to redesign the best meeting-space we currently have, our Media Center.  Instead of descending into dark tunnels to locate it, let’s redesign the approach to make it welcoming, visible, vital to ROHS.
• The addition of quality high school-produced art (of all media types) to break up and personalize the monochromatic hallways and for landscaping as well.
• The “greening” of the building (a job well suited to our principal’s nomenclature). Could we be more efficient? More environmentally responsible?  Beyond recycling, let’s look at green roofs, solar panel supplements to power, and better window design (They are Ugly with a capital “U” both aesthetically and in terms of energy loss).
• Kiosks around the building for news of events, club activities, etc.  This will eliminate the cheap and temporary wall-papering of our halls with signs and help create central locations for students to find news; just like college campuses do.
• Permanent and quality displays of student clubs, sports, academics, arts, and current events in the building and the phasing out of dusty and poorly-used showcases and bulletin boards.
• And for a sense of ownership, the legitimizing of student representation and governance in the creation of all these ideas.

As construction nears its end (?), we’re in a good time to begin this discussion in earnest.