The physical environment and the social structure of the school can be modified by providing comfortable, non threatening, yet challenging settings where curiosity and involvement are plentiful. The design of a learning environment versus a school building is a new image that is a practical strategy to refocus the process of education. It encourages student-to student interaction, and thus fosters cooperative learning. Inter-personal, language and math skills are embedded in daily operations of the learning community. Students' suppositions, points of view, and quest for meaning are all addressed in the role play of school life.
Students come to understand that they are ultimately responsible for their own learning.
It abandons the mimetic approach to learning and uses practices that encourage students to think and rethink, demonstrate, and exhibit. Our ideal school is designed to create activities that students find engaging and from which they learn things that are of social and cultural value. It is designed to have instructional time for reading, writing and mathematics. These skills are embedded in an integrated project based set of activities. The images shown in this photo essay do not lend themselves well to these types of learning activities.