Information and instruction are everywhere.
You don't need your schools to deliver data.
You need school to bring it to life.

We offer facility-based strategies
that bring schools to life.

For schools contending with legacy 20th century buildings, we offer an approach to getting more out of your infrastructure without massive renovations.

For schools considering renovations, we offer a perspective that may have you radically rethinking your program and your definition of success.

For districts considering new school construction, we offer tools to help you think through your program from first principles.

In a recent survey of American teachers,
half of teachers endorsed our approach and a
quarter of teachers requested more information
before committing to a verdict.

Click here for more details of our 2025 Teacher Survey:

It’s true: a quarter of teachers
rejected our approach!
This is no panacea.

Drop us a quick note and we can review the issues that snag implementation and demonstrate how attention to the details can overcome these concerns. We will give you a fresh perspective on your operations, your renovations or your new construction planning:

Nonetheless, 88.4% of survey participants agreed:
the result would be more engaging for students.

Take a look at how you can engage with us here:

Re-imagining your school, or your impending construction project, can be a daunting prospect. You may not believe there are alternatives that could help you to get much, much more out of your school facility. Alternatives that enroll your very expensive facility in empowering and retaining teachers. Alternatives that improve student engagement. Please feel free to explore this site to find out more about our perspective, our strategies, our research and what we can do to help you.

Rethinking the experience of learning

We think of school as classrooms and cafeterias, libraries and auditoriums, offices and locker or cubby-lined corridors. We imagine, because it was so for us, that these are the tools you need to get the job done. We forget that the culture changed after we left school. We forget that the tools  and the possibilities have expanded dramatically since then. We forget that the very nature of work has changed. We forget that the exponential curve of technological advancement now guarantees that learning will be life-long and just-in-time and practically impossible to  plan.

The school you knew is not the school your children need.

A new lexicon of learning experiences and environments.

You exalt Creativity: but have you considered Meditation to teach students intuition? Have you constructed Caves and Nests to encourage concentration? Do you focus on Magic, to set sights higher than mere competence? Do all of your teachers and students frequent your Workshops to engage with tools and making? Do you connect to your community with Safaris tthat promote empathy? How do you feel about Subversion as a path to invention?

You exalt Curiosity: but do you offer Adventures that confront, body and mind, the unknown?  Does your school employ Shrines and Media Arrays and Big Maps to inspire imagination and a sense of possibility? Do you inspire Quests that imbue questions with epic, emotional significance?

You exalt Collaboration: but do you employ Apprenticeships to honor mastery? Do you prioritize and demonstrate Passion, in order to inspire Leadership? Do you employ sustained efforts like Gardens to demonstrate the beauty of teamwork? Do you liberally sprinkle the school day with Games, to link learning to Joy?

You exalt Communication: but do you offer lessons in Conversation that teach students how to Listen? Do you have a Speaker's Corner, to teach them to speak? Do you support and encourage Storytelling, and employ Campfires, to teach the power of authenticity and the ability to create meaning? Do you regularly offer experiences poignant enough to inspire Writing worth reading?

You exalt Critical Thinking: but do you support Demolition, for lessons in shattering clichés? Do you teach dynamic Listening, to insure understanding? Do you offer small Round Table conversations to challenge preconceptions? Is your school filled with Puzzles, to teach endurance and a growth mindset? Have you established a physical Market of ideas and resources to promote comparison and diversity? Do you carefully offer challenges, the Races and Duels that promote Resilience, and teach students to thrive on critique?

The point is not that School is devoid entirely of these rich, emotional experiences and environments: only that they too often seem few and far between. They could be the core of the enterprise. Imagine your school as a place that doesn't glue students to a chair and doesn't attach teachers to a presentation wall. 

Consider re-inventing your school. 

 A recent survey of American teachers (Krabbendam, 2025) demonstrated strong support for a school organized around a rich and varied palette of learning environments. Invited to re-imagine their own school, 48.8% of respondents voiced support for the approach, 28.6% required more information before offering a verdict, and 22.6% of respondents rejected the approach. Most important, 88.4% of respondents agreed that the newly re-organized school would be more successful in engaging students than their existing school.

The key take-away: existing schools can be re-imagined and re-organized to recapture student engagement.