Better Learning Podcast Episode 199: Building Tomorrow’s Schools with Creative Collaboration

In this insightful episode of the Better Learning Podcast, host Kevin Stoller welcomes Emmy Beeson and Jennifer Fuller to discuss the vital connection between school design and educational success. The conversation dives into the challenges schools face as they strive to innovate, as well as the pivotal role architects play in supporting educational missions. Together, they emphasize the importance of collaboration between educators, architects, and communities to create learning environments that truly enhance student engagement and foster creativity.

The episode sheds light on how architecture can—and should—support a school’s curriculum and mission, with both Beeson and Fuller sharing their perspectives on aligning design with educational goals. They also highlight the significance of involving the entire school community in the design process, ensuring that spaces reflect the needs of students and educators alike.

Takeaways:

• The goal is to provide every child with the best opportunity to succeed.
• Personal experiences in education shape future leaders.
• Rethinking school design is crucial for educational transformation.
• Shared vision is essential for successful facility planning.
• Community engagement is vital for educational success.
• Facilities should reflect the desired student experience.
• Leadership stability is important for long-term change.

Emmy supports district leaders to develop a shared vision, build capacity toward that vision, and align communication and decision making to the shared vision. She also guides district leaders on long-term implementation and systems sustainability, including succession planning. Emmy brings more than 20 years of educational experience, having served as superintendent at Ridgemont Local Schools and Tolles Career & Technical Center. She has truly lived the work she now brings to school districts around the country, offering a first-hand understanding of everyday challenges faced by leadership.

Jennifer Fuller is a principal at Fanning Howey, an architecture, interiors and engineering firm specializing in the design of learning environments. As an architect, Jenn has the drive to take on the biggest jobs and the leadership skills to help everyone perform at their highest level. Jenn’s clients love how she blends her own thought leadership with a listen-first approach to planning, engagement and design.

Sound Bites:
"We want every kid to have the best opportunity."
"I watched teachers come back to life."

Follow Jennifer on Social Media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-holdren-fuller-19a6599/

Learn More About Fanning Howey:

Website: https://fhai.com/

Follow Emmy on Social Media:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmy-beeson-61095127/

Learn More About Partnerships For All:

Website: https://www.partnershipsforall.org/

Learn more about creating better learning environments at www.Kay-Twelve.com.

Kevin Stoller is the host of the Better Learning Podcast and Co-Founder of Kay-Twelve, a national leader for educational furniture. Find out more about Kevin at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinstoller/.

For more episodes of the Better Learning Podcast, visit https://www.betterlearningpodcast.com/

Episode 199 of the Better Learning Podcast

Kevin Stoller is the host of the Better Learning Podcast and Co-Founder of Kay-Twelve, a national leader for educational furniture. Learn more about creating better learning environments at www.Kay-Twelve.com.

For more information on our partners:

Association for Learning Environments (A4LE) - https://www.a4le.org/

Education Leaders' Organization - https://www.ed-leaders.org/

Second Class Foundation - https://secondclassfoundation.org/

EDmarket - https://www.edmarket.org/

Catapult @ Penn GSE - https://catapult.gse.upenn.edu/

Want to be a Guest Speaker? Request on our website

Transcript

Kevin Stoller (00:07.102)
It's another episode of the Better Learning Podcast. My name is Kevin Stoller, host of the show. And for the listeners that have been listening to show, they know that we are always trying to look at three different buckets of education. Our goal is really to break down the silos and how do we have conversations that really facilitate change and improvement into the education system. We're looking typically at three different buckets. And what I'm excited about our topic today is we're combining maybe all three of them.

in here. We're typically talking about leadership, how the leadership really impacts the district or the site. We also talk about space a lot. So we have a lot of conversations about with architects and talking about the learning environment. And then that third buckets, we're talking more about like just the change makers of like.

those things, whether they're internal within the walls of education or external, but what are those things that really spark that, that change, that we all feel like we need. So, the common theme in this podcast is all about how is that we know, and we all have the same goal that we want every kid to have the best opportunity to succeed. So how do we foster that? So with all that introduction, I'm going to introduce Emmy Beeson and Jennifer Fuller. I'll start Emmy with you. You're coming with us.

background as a superintendent and now working with a nonprofit. But, Emmy, how are you doing? I'm great. Thanks for having us today. And Jennifer is going with Fanning Howey, architect out of Dublin, Ohio, and I've worked with him many times in the past. So it's good to see you, Jennifer. How are you? Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Obviously architecture and building environment, but love where we do what we do in the environment of students. And so this is something I've never done before. Thanks for having me, Kevin. Yeah. Well, I'm going to get you guys started with an easy question because it really helps set it up. But I want to hear what was school like for you as you were going through school? I mean, do you mind starting out? What was your experience? Yeah.

Kevin Stoller (02:17.558)
It's funny people haven't asked me this question a lot but Honestly, I didn't love school in the younger grades I was a struggling reader early on did not love school did not find

lots of connections, just problems, until about third grade when a really special teacher found some ways to connect with me. I still didn't love reading. I was better at it, but I still didn't love it until coming into later middle school and I started, for some reason, like something unlocked. And then it was like, this makes sense and I can kind of make the world whatever it is that I want to

be by reading, by going different avenues. And had a lot of friends in high school. And I think the high school piece, like watching teenagers struggle, was the place where I started to decide maybe this is the field that I wanted to go in. It was more the social side of helping young people. And education was going to just be a great vehicle to allow me to stay connected to young people.

recognize that? Yeah, I don't. mean, I became a social studies teacher.

Mostly because my social studies teacher told me that those positions are reserved for football and basketball coaches. So I couldn't be one. so I kind of just did it, you know, out of spite maybe, but I wasn't necessarily like in love with content as I was. How do I engage young people and unlock, things for them? Yeah, very cool. Yeah. That's interesting. We'll probably pull more of that into the conversation. Jennifer, how about for you? What was school like? well, it's funny. I loved school.

Kevin Stoller (04:13.136)
from an early age through.

through secondary, all of it. I liked, I organize, okay so type A personality a little bit, which a lot of architects are. But I did very well, my family was very encouraging of, but the funny thing is my mom, she did not go to college, she's a hairdresser and she was a successful business owner as well. A lot of volunteer staff, she sat on boards of things, so she sort of found her avenue that way and said,

you're not getting a trade school education, you're going to college. And I didn't know what that meant when I was younger, right? My dad's an accountant. But I found out early on, so like seventh grade, shop class, I chose to do that instead of home ec.

and realized I like to build stuff. I like to work with my hands and I'm not, you know, I'm not actually building a building, but just tinkering with things. Not in the dynamite sense, but could I blow something up or not? You know what I mean when it comes to that? that turning on a light and, building a light and being able to have it function in the seventh grade, right? That was kind of like a fun project for me. And so again, being told you're not going to trade school because I might have gone down

Career tech, kind of love working with career techs and all those thinking about those classes and those hands-on is really where I enjoyed things the most. And then just sort of leading there, I think seventh grade I said, okay, I to be an architect because I'd like to do that. I like to draw pretty artistic from that side of things. And again, I liked school. So I would fill up in high school. I was just joking with some friends recently from high school.

Kevin Stoller (06:02.38)
They didn't realize I took classes from like period zero to period like nine. You know, we were, I went to school in Westerville in Ohio and we had some overcrowding situations. So we had all these extra.

I guess periods that kids could not all be in school at the same time and I would go in at seven and I would work until like there was a practice. You know, I'd be in a class, some elective, whatever I could find that was extra. So I took extra art classes. My school, lucky enough, I was able to do some VOTEC stuff in the school. So I did a mechanical drafting class, an architecture class, and some things like that, which is nothing like the real world. I thought it was great at the time and it's very, very different.

But it was just kind of kept reinforcing that, okay, you're gonna go do architecture and I'm gonna live at school until I have to go home and go to bed. So a little different from Emmy, let's say. Yeah, but seventh grade on, you had to be able to identify that early. The career technical CTE conversation will come up here.

Is that where the two of you first started collaborating or do you know each other before? No, no, just through the Fanning Howie and this partnership. think some other folks that I work with had had worked with Emmy or maybe not directly or and they and somebody said we're missing something and we need Emmy.

And that's right. was a few years ago. And once I met Emmy, I was like, you're right. We were missing something. And I was getting more into this side of the profession, more direct contact with the school district, kind of help them plan and just meeting her and realizing, yeah, there's a different connection that needs to be made. Well, before we get to that, what I mean to jump ahead. Yeah. Talk to you about transition, going social studies teacher to

Kevin Stoller (08:04.16)
superintendent of Career Technical School. Yeah. Well, when I became a teacher, I had no intention of ever becoming an administrator. And, you know, that's the dark side and I was not going to the dark side. And I was only a teacher in the classroom for six years. And before I was

with the idea that I have these really great relationships with 100 kids in high school. And in my last teaching position, I taught in a career center.

And I think looking back, that Career Center experience actually really changed how I think about education. I didn't know it at the time. But it was like, if I move into administration, I can have even more impact. And that is both true and not true at the same time. The impact that I was having in the classroom, I could not have that kind of impact. But...

I could have more system impact.

And again, I realized that later on too, but I was able to move into a curriculum position and then from central office move into a superintendent role in a K-12 district, which is where I was introduced to having to go after a bond issue and look at architecture and building projects. And then after that was in a career technical center serving districts in central Ohio. So.

Kevin Stoller (09:42.192)
That's been the long journey, but the truth is the experience around building design and feeling like as I learned more that maybe people were asking me the wrong questions as a school superintendent who did not have previous construction and design experience. Maybe people are asking me the wrong questions and maybe there is a different way to use the school design experience to ultimately get systems

change, that started bubbling up for me. so this is just like a big long, long circle that finally came all the way around to have this wonderful opportunity. That's a great segue. So what were the questions that they were asking you that made you think?

These may not be the right question. Well, so the questions in building programming were like, tell me how you teach second grade now. Tell us how do you deliver special education services now? What does gifted education look like now? And so I was planning everything from a past perspective.

And I wasn't even really aware that I was doing that. I was just answering the questions that people were asking me. This is how you go through the process. And it was really some of my high school students who started sending me pictures of schools in other states and schools in other countries and started saying things like, well, could we have this? What about this? I mean, these were things I'd never seen before. I never imagined educational space other than

Kevin Stoller (11:28.588)
long corridors and classrooms on both sides, right? Or some semblance of that in a career center. And so when I started asking architects, what if, could this be? And the response was, well, do you have an instructional model that supports designing that way? well.

No, I don't currently because we're teaching this way. But if I had an instructional model that we wanted to move toward, then we could design this way. Yeah, then we could think about what this looks like. So in really short order, we created, you know, which with Fanny Howie is now much more robust experience, but like a visioning experience that has to become a shared vision, not a board vision.

or a superintendent or a central office vision, a shared vision and what would that mean and what would that mean for education. Once we configure that out, then we can figure out where the walls go, but not the other way around. And unfortunately, a lot of places are still designing schools and then trying to cram some kind of educational model into whatever this building is instead of doing it the other way around.

you were hitting a topic that I love talking about. Jennifer, how does that make you feel hearing that? did you feel like from your perspective?

That's what we, that's what you were kind of trained to do as an architect building new schools. What's your take hearing what Emma just said? No, exactly that. I mean, we're not educators, but, and school architects are, feel a little different and we were all specialized, right? A hotel, someone designing a hotel is very different than, well, we can build a building. There's some nuances to some of those different spaces. So I knew that I've been working

Kevin Stoller (13:32.588)
in educational environments for 25 years. So I've built a lot of schools and lot of spaces. They're all, you know, functional. Well, maybe they're not all functional, actually, right? Now that we're talking about it. But it's sort of like, yeah, when someone says, I'm going to do this activity, well, we aligned the activity with the space and then furniture and technology. And, know, we're trying to bring it all together. But, you know, as soon as I've heard me say that and

and that was the approach. this is your English class. and you want breakouts? Yeah, we can do breakouts and we'll do them over here and they're gonna look like this. Flexible furniture, well yeah, we'll make that happen. daylighting and glass and all the data that says this is what your students need, right, for better outcomes. Yeah, we can do all of those things, but then when it was like, what if I, you know, if we would get a, I'll say crazy question from.

educator like what if I want to do this sometimes you're like

I might fall into like my engineering side that doesn't compute with me like we're doing this kind of space planning. What do mean you want to do? You want to do that? So I think it it kind of feeds both ways or it has been feeding both ways. I'm building this when I hear me talk and then when we don't talk about a building and we're talking about what's the curriculum and what do want to do in this space? What are the drivers? We're not counting students. you want to put 50 in here and then my head goes to the code and now I need more than

one door, you know what I mean? Like I can separate and really listen to and hear the vision on an educational side and what do we want our students to learn? What do we want to push out in the world? Right? It becomes just so much bigger than this space we're sitting in. And when we can detach the two, really have these big visioning

Kevin Stoller (15:29.858)
conversations, then later you'll have a beautiful building, we'll get there, right? So I just kind of love this front end conversation that I've been able to be part of.

I feel like too that shared vision piece, because I had conversations just like what you're talking about where the teachers are sitting with the architects and saying, we want this and we want this.

And so much of that then is driven by the personal teaching style, the personal interests, the personal drive of that teaching team or that one teacher instead of this is the overarching shared vision for instructional delivery at these grade levels or in this school or in this district. And creating that vision together in a way that teachers might say, gosh, that's a little different

or that's a lot different than what I'm doing right now.

but I want to want to go there, right? You know, I, I'm, we're not there yet. This building's five years down the road or four years down the road. So what do I have to do in order to build the capacity to get to that new thing, which is why, like no pun intended, but like buildings are a concrete way to get districts to move because, so much of what we do feels very nebulous. It's the state discussion. It's this mandate. It's this new.

Kevin Stoller (17:01.252)
instructional strategy. heard these people talk about this. should try it. And communities don't know how to wrap their arms around.

Why should we change? It's going pretty well here. It was great for me. It was great for you know, but when you start talking about we're going to invest millions of dollars and you're going to vote on it and we're going to create these spaces, let's be really intentional about why we're doing it, what we want to do. And then all of sudden it's like, the world has changed since I was in school and now

can see why they would want a classroom that doesn't look like a classroom or classrooms that share together so that they can have career tech and core academics in similar spaces integrating to solve real world problems. that comes from having either a building or a district vision, not from individual groups getting to decide what they want in their section of the building.

I mean, I heard it in you when you talked about you were a social studies teacher because it was typically the coaches and that was a fuel for you. So we always talk about it's the change makers in education that are going to drive that change.

can hear that in you. What were you looking at? Like what sparked it for you to say like, hey, you're asking the wrong questions or I'm seeing other things. I know that students were bringing things to you, but as the superintendent is saying, all right, now I gotta take this big boat and start moving in a different direction. What was going through your mind? Like how are you approaching that? Well, I think honestly,

Kevin Stoller (18:47.394)
When I became an administrator, my dad was really mad at me because his view of public education was that teachers were the ones that work really hard and administrators are the ones that screw stuff up and ask people for levy dollars because they didn't spend their money well. And so my promise to my dad when he was like, what are you doing? My promise was that I will make decisions with those tax dollars as if that was my money.

and you'll be proud of what I do in this community. So when the kids started showing me other schools in other countries, other states, and I started seeing possibilities, and I could recognize, I mean, like one of the buildings that we were placing was over 100 years old. This school district,

in rural Ohio is not going to build another facility for another 80 years, another 100 years. If I help them design a new version of an old building, then we will keep teaching the way we were teaching 50 years ago.

And that's like how we will continue to produce. And that would be a bad use of taxpayer dollars. My dad would be upset with me for making that decision. So it was about like, how do I start future proofing? How do I start thinking down the road around what instructional delivery needs to be like for kids to be able to solve real world problems? And then.

how do we design space in a way that lets us do that? I mean, honestly, I guess the bottom line was really about how we spend taxpayer money. And to be a good steward of that, I needed to do something different than what was being done before me.

Kevin Stoller (20:53.966)
Jen, I don't want to put you on the spot too much, but, because if you don't answer, yeah. All right. I'm going to, but I can talk for a long time about Ohio in particular because of how much time I have spent in Ohio versus what I've seen in the rest of the country. how hard is it?

to not do what Emmy just explained of just recreate a new school of the other school just in an updated building, given the constraints of the model that is basically the standard in Ohio.

Well, that is putting me on the spot. I going do it. I can say all the mean things if you want because I don't live in Ohio anymore. Well, I mean, know, we're the Midwest. We're a little balanced here, right? So we want to make sure we don't say anything bad about each other, right? Everything's fine. We're all fine. I think you've seen that. from Ohio. Works well enough to Canada, you know. Right. So it's funny because, well,

On one hand, we've got the Ohio Facility Construction Commission. And while it's kind of changed names over its 20 years of being a commission, they've done some wonderful things, right? They've really looked at equality across the state. They're really trying to bring districts up. So, and you have to have a formula and a process to do something like that. it always starts planning.

on paper and how do we get somewhere and how do we support more people than not and more districts that wouldn't be able to build something like that.

Kevin Stoller (22:47.63)
It's like being an architect. There's there's a couple different ways to tackle something and and you have to plan So it's trying to get out of the planning mold a little bit. It's well we have to have a program I hear that all the time and we do you have to know what you're building You have to know how big how big it is because then you have to know how much it's gonna cost and those things all come in line so That's the one side of it. You've got to plan for all of all of the things have the dollars have the reasoning why

But then, I mean, there really has to be, we are in 2024. And when we do look at the way.

a hundred years ago. mean, in some of the buildings I've just, I see kids that are in these hundred year old buildings, some that were tearing down because we were able to build some new space for them. It's like, it's gotta be different. And so I do think that the driver is we have to learn how to read, we have to learn how to write, right? There is a component to that, but we have to look at like all the different ways that students learn because we know it's not the same.

I think for me maybe the first thought was, because I was in my desk, in my row, in my seat, back to your first question, I was good with that. I didn't bounce around. didn't have any, no, I wasn't distracted. I am a distracted adult, but I was not a distracted kid. This what they do to us. Right, need my mom maybe or my dad to come around.

No, stay focused. But I get distracted now. Then I wasn't bouncing around, but so furniture, that was maybe for me the first that I saw.

Kevin Stoller (24:31.398)
as furniture was starting, I think maybe furniture led the design and not the architects of the school building, architects of furniture because there were opportunities there. Yeah, kids need something different. Kids that are busy need busy furniture to help them stay focused, right? And some who needed a row and a desk and the thing they needed needed that too. So then it was like, how do we start meshing all these things together? And you could see that that would light up an educator.

especially in the younger grades. was like, my god, I have students who need the, I need five of these, need, you know, when we started talking about furnishing something in a building, it was, okay, well now you have your spaces, let's talk a little bit about the end user and what that's gonna look like. And so that started helping me see it in a different way.

I think, Kevin, your question, and Jen, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that is the actual reason that partnerships now has a relationship with Fanning Howey. Like it was.

has been hard to get schools to recognize that building a new building is a real opportunity for possible transformation. And even if they did recognize it, how in the world do we do that? Because we, as educational leaders, we really are not trained in leading organizational management or organizational change. Organizational change. What does it mean to

really do that. And so to say, you know, one of the reasons I love this conversation with Fanning Howey is that it's not about the building. It's about smarter, happier places. We want to see outcomes for student learning. And there's a disconnect between building a facility and not knowing whether or not that makes an outcome for kids.

Kevin Stoller (26:36.046)
or doing planning work with a small group of people in a district who want to push into a transitional or transformational design because they have big plans but it's not shared and so we

We raise the money, we go through design, we build a building, and now we're in the building for three years and the people who occupy it don't know why it was designed this way and they don't like it. I'm putting paper up on the glass, I'm putting bookshelves in front of spaces where I'm supposed to be collaborating with somebody else because it was never a shared vision from the beginning in order to build the capacity of adults to change.

how they operate in the facility. Kids will change. Kids are not the issue. It's adult capacity. And so I think the challenge that Ohio, I mean I can speak to Ohio specifically, presented is the reason why Fanning Howey said what does it look like to have a different kind of visioning experience on the front end? How do we gather that information and create guiding principles for design that become like our filter for decision making the whole?

way through and then in the places where the leadership will lean in, how do we support them to build capacity toward more authentic learning, more student centered approaches so that the building makes sense? I think that's the challenge. Yeah. Yeah. And that to me is where I see the rest of the country and Jennifer, answered it.

I may steal some of your answer because it's a nicer answer than what I say, because the OFCC does do some really good things as far as equity. I do love the funding model and how, you know, like the way they're doing it, but it is a very rigid one where you're like, no, this is what it is. This is what a school looks like and these are the requirements you have to stick to. I, one, I'm impressed that both of you found a way to navigate that and work visioning into it.

Kevin Stoller (28:53.838)
How hard, before I get into my next question, how hard was that? Did you have to push back or did you just kind of figure out a way to kind of play around the margins on that?

I will say that I think OFCC was hearing it from a lot of districts. Let architects more their end user. And so they do have the opportunity for districts to work with someone who can do visioning. So they can hire someone independently and kind of work navigate through that. we just didn't want to have to, I don't want to say work with anybody. We wanted it to become a, be part of our process. So we also

saw that this is important. We were seeing outcomes a different way when there was more alignment upfront. And again, not because we're not educators, maybe we weren't the ones that they were looking towards to make it happen. So I think we were also recognizing and then we hit our capacity limit, right? Like I can only do so much, you know, when we're trying to pull those things together, it's more based on our experience or some outcomes that we have seen.

It only made sense to to work with somebody directly and say how do we infuse the things that we love to do why our firm focuses on k-12 it is for the students and their outcome and how do we get that Someone to help us pull it out of ourselves pull it out of the district and then we can start blending blending the two things yeah, and and I think the maybe the difference is OFCC's visioning experience is

over.

Kevin Stoller (30:39.086)
one or two days, it's a small group of people, right? It's, it's, it's, running this, design or visioning experience. And then it's incumbent on the school leader to figure out how to translate this experience that 25 to 50 people had for thousands of other people. Like, how do I help you buy into an experience that you did not experience? And so our process, includes a

more moving parts. It isn't a one-day piece. How do we open the door to as many stakeholders as possible to be a part of that shared vision? And then, you know, then they got to work some magic in the programming where they move around square footage and add square footage to make that make all that work. But then there's a reason to do it because we understand how you want to deliver instruction.

as opposed to standardized classroom. And that's the piece and that's why I like these conversations and.

Some of the associations that were affiliated with like Association for Learning Environments and Ed Market. And we're not officially affiliated with like AASA, but we're seeing some of this crossover because exactly to your point, Emmy, there's now programs, there's programs like Eclipse and Ed Market. And then there's been kind of this ALEP, ALEP program that's more to understand the academic side of

of things. But the next layer that you're talking about, Emmy, is what I think is coming in the works. And it's pretty exciting to see that there is this layer of like, how do we help the school leaders? Because it's basically like, most of the time as a superintendent, if you're building a new school, that's probably your one and only shot in your career to do. So there is some more education and like cohorts and communities being created around these communities to help

Kevin Stoller (32:44.364)
facilitate that because it is, I mean, I would assume, I mean, it's it's overwhelming to say like, wait, I know I not only have to report to a board, I also have a, you know, a big staff and some of the cases the superintendent is really like leading the largest organization in their community as far as dollar amount of people. Absolutely. I think it's really in smaller districts where the superintendent has to be the lead.

visionary, the lead designer, the lead person on construction, and not necessarily have a strong operations person.

it's overwhelming and in a really big district where there is a facilities or operations person, now is it, is it always connected back then to educational vision, right? Like now there's a disconnect. So how we, how we support leaders and how we equip leaders for doing this job, because it's probably, mean, for even if not in their career, in their community, it might be a once in a generation opportunity.

How do we equip leaders and support them to do this work and get real transformation for educational outcomes and and new buildings not just new buildings? So when you were going through that did you were you were you able to find others that you can talk to to? Look to and learn from or did you really feel like you're kind of like a trailblazer of like I figure this out

I, yeah, I really felt like I was alone in a lot of it. Now there were, some other superintendents once I was farther down the road a little bit that, we have some similar stories. Like we, could connect. but even now in how we talk about this work, I feel like it's the,

Kevin Stoller (34:50.774)
yeah, that makes sense. We should do that. But it's not, Jen, please, please, you know, jump in. I don't feel like people are coming saying we're thinking about facilities and we want to make sure that we have a shared vision for the desired student experience that really leads to this work. Like it's, we're not talking like that. No, no, not at all. When you bring it up, there's two, the superintendent and leadership are like, yes, yes, we should be doing that.

But you're right, think, and I think maybe too, Kevin, to your point, like you've got...

as a superintendent, you're doing all these things. You're leading the vision, you're leading the building project, you've got all the staff, just so many hats. So maybe there are some of compartmentalizing, okay, today this is construction focused and this is curriculum focused and this is PD focused. Or, now I got a safety drill, right? There's a lot of things to think about. there may just not be a way to cross over.

initially. It's got to be something that becomes more natural and it's just not. So I think just the more we have the conversations if you know with Emmy, with the partnership, just getting things out there, talking about it differently starts to affect the change a little too. Right. You know I'm thinking of Brent Welker at Eastwood. When we we approach this conversation around visioning, very quick

yes. Right. Like I get it. And man, we should be having this discussion whether we're talking about buildings or not. Right. So how do we engage in that? Right. was it's like it's in the pulse. People are ready. We just have to open the doors and help support leaders in in the work. Yeah. And it's funny with with Eastwood and Brent that they already did a building.

Kevin Stoller (36:54.87)
And he was connecting some dots. This was years ago. But he knew it. He knows it now. Well, hey, we're thinking about another building, but that's a little ways off. So to really embrace, so yes, we should do this. I think was so great. I mean, while we have you here, where, if, if there was this message to try to like,

be able to educate, be able to offer some of those resources in those communities. Where would be the best place to, like, where would you even find that or seek that? is it at like, kind of like the, like the school board association meetings or where there are certain areas where you're like, you know what, like.

Kevin Stoller (37:45.998)
that if we were going to bring this message out there, where would be the best place to bring Where would we want to share the message? Yeah, because I do feel like the industry, this whole industry all has, like I said at the beginning, really has the same interests. We truly care. We are all wanting to do this better. But what would be the way we would be able to reach the superintendents who may have a bond coming up or are going?

you know, the war bond that just passed before they get down too far down the path to say, now you're teamed up now. Like, Hey, this is a best practice. Right. You don't have to be the trailblazer every single time. yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think the challenge is, that there's just so much on leaders plates that unless it's on your plate right now, I don't, you know, like that's too much noise. I'm just focused on, right. And so I think showing up in.

Lots of places are available over time, Like thinking about the Buckeye Association of School Administrators and their equivalent in every state would be a great place. Helping boards of education understand what they should be thinking about in master facility planning would be great. One, do they even know what master facility planning is? Two, would they differentiate a quality product that is focused on educational?

visioning and facilities planning versus a facilities plan like what would they be nuanced enough to be able to to see those I think would be really great places to share I Think Yeah, I don't know like it's just how do we get in front of people when it's the need to know right

This sounds maybe crazy, but even like in getting your superintendent's license, at least in Ohio years ago, you you had to study construction a little bit. But I might have not been paying attention, but at least I don't recall anything that connected the study of facilities and operations and tax levies with the actual instructional delivery and desired student experience. Like maybe I should have connected those.

Kevin Stoller (40:10.572)
That's all by myself because I was going into leadership. But those really foundational places for leaders.

Yeah. mean, Jen, are you having similar discussions at other places? Yeah, it is too. You know, because we just, we want to develop relationships, right? So we don't want to just go in and say, someone's got a project, let's submit on it. And maybe they'll hire us. We want to get ahead of it. So that's kind of been our mission in Ohio. And we've got some other offices nationally too, if there's a FIT or we have a partner.

We might want to look at that and we want to develop the relationship. We want to talk ahead of the project. kind of to Emmy's point, when you're not doing it or you're not in it, sometimes it's just too much for an administrator to want to keep that in the conversation. But I think it's just as we continue to just talk to folks that that's a way for us to do it. So hopefully when we do call on a superintendent, they'll take a couple minutes.

Right and we can talk about curriculum with a building. It's not all about just the building, right? Just because processing right I'm thinking well while you're talking I guess that the two other things that I would say in answer to that is Years ago and I've not engaged in this for a long time, but years ago I was really trying to lobby hard the Ohio facilities Construction Commission around a change in process

like that the state should be considering a different process. And we did get visioning out of that, right? But visioning that is a short experience versus building the capacity of our districts. If we were gonna be crazy change makers, there's a connection between what the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Development wants and the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission wants.

Kevin Stoller (42:15.616)
And how those things should be related to each other instead of separate buckets in the state of Ohio. So like there's a crazy piece. But really it goes back to that comment from Brent Welker Eastwood. We should be having this discussion about the desired student experience and how we want to transform instructional delivery, whether we are building buildings or not. So any any leader, any superintendent should be saying.

Do I have a shared vision for my school district? In other words, can the teachers tell me why learning here is different than the district next door or what our focus is? Can the custodian tell me? Can the Board of Education tell me? Can the parent down there at the football game tell me? If they can all tell me and work toward that, then we don't have a shared vision. And how do I create that as a leader in a school district?

Kevin Stoller (43:16.142)
And that's where the best leaders are doing that. It is all about that culture change and really getting it all the way through. Yeah. Not only through, the school, but through the community. Yes. Yeah. I can talk about this forever. Like you guys are hitting like my, my favorite thing because like our company K-12, like we, we have to say we are a mission driven organization to improve education. And because of that,

we've identified like, yes, space and furniture matters. It matters. But there's actually two other components that if I was against, I would say are more important are the leadership. you know, like one, you know, if you just look at the fact of what the tenure of a school superintendent is in America right now, it's under three years. Yep. So there's an aspect of like, if that leadership is turning over every three years, we're just never going to.

really see the types of movement, the types of change that's needed. So how do we get them in longer? So we created an organization called Education Leaders Organization that was all about supporting leaders and creating these like confidential viewer groups so that they have outlets so that they can learn better. And it's not just about their professional life. It's really looking at a 360 degree view of their life.

Because it is, you know, like, I mean, would think you can relate. There are certain things that you just don't have outlets for. You may not want to go to your spouse about certain things. You definitely can't talk to your staff about certain things. There's things that you would talk differently to your board about. you know, it's a lonely, lonely, lonely position. So, so being able to do that. And then this other one of like, how do we get the community? So that other bucket.

is really more about how do we change that culture, not only within the schools, but with the communities. Because if we're not speaking to them, I think we've all seen kind of all the horror stories that are happening around the country where it's become a battle between the local community and the school district, where they really need to be on the same page to do that. yeah, I'll share it. People that have been listening to the podcast, we,

Kevin Stoller (45:43.34)
We had a, we have a nonprofit that started with the idea of how do we make that culture change through the use of media and storytelling. And we have a docu-series that we're working on where the first episode is really setting the stage for that. Because the people that are not in schools like us every day, like they, this is not their right. Right. So how do we get them to understand like, this is what schools could and should look like?

and why it matters to them as a community member. sorry, get it. I get worked up on this. I'll stop talking on that. Anything that I didn't ask you about through this, like at the end of the day, guess, I guess a good way to wrap it up maybe be like, what, what are you most proud of this project? Now, when you look at the end result of what you guys did working together.

school what stands out to you? I'm gonna jump in that first. To me is just the culture at Fanning Howey is definitely a K-12 mindset and really building the future in the next generation of learners. We've said that a couple of times but I think the partnership with ME and then how we're implementing that feels very real and authentic and we're learning as we go to

So I think it's good to say we don't have all the answers, but we can, based on our experience and your experience, we can build on that to get the best outcome. And so I just love that we're learning organization and Emmys helping us see that. We knew it, right? We knew it on paper. We all love the community and how they thrive and there's nothing better than a dedication.

of a new building and seeing the impact that the community has on that, but that we were helping them get there and that we just build off that too and that enthusiasm. It's just really exciting, but our partnership and I just feel the way that Emmy speaks about it is hitting differently and that we're starting to feel differently about it. That it's not just the building. That we can give them a beautiful building and we're gonna do that, but let's really make it.

Kevin Stoller (48:10.604)
what it needs to be to keep going forward.

Yeah, that's so good. think in my construction experience when even in the process before we had moved into the new facility, but because we had a shared vision and people understood where we were wanting to go and why for kids, I watched teachers come back to life. I watched teachers who were like, I'm done with this job.

find joy again, find purpose again, because they could connect to kids in a really meaningful way and see outcomes, differences in behavior, in connection, in their achievement. And I watched the same for students where kids wanted to work on the things that were being asked of them. They wanted to create more projects. They were telling us problems that needed to be solved and they were the kids that were going to figure out how to do that.

And being able to be a little part of that journey for these other school districts that are working with Fanning Howey and with partnerships to envision this future that they can't quite see yet, but that we know we can have for our kids in our community. And to know that leaders need a catalyst for change. And

There's no, there is no better opportunity than to take advantage of a facilities project as your catalyst to get done. The thing that you know in your heart is right and good for kids. So I think my own journey and getting to be on that journey with other people are the things that I'm most proud of. That's great. Yeah. I love that. I've had a lot of the conversations of when you're in that visioning or when you're early on in the process, if you think like every school in the country.

Kevin Stoller (50:10.83)
has this plaque up in the lobby of their school. What do you want your legacy to be? Do you want it to be a legacy that we just created the same thing that we had for the last 100 years, for the next 100 years, or that we really made the effort to figure out what can we do to leave that legacy and really try it?

change for the community. So absolutely. Yeah. Very cool. Well, thank you both so much. I love this conversation. Yeah. And having you on here, for the listeners, if you enjoy these types of conversations or if you have any ideas of other ones, betterlearningpodcast.com is our hub for everything. you can subscribe there or sign up for the email lists, or you can subscribe wherever you're listening, but there's also a form out there where we get a lot of our records.

and we review it in our planning meetings. So fill out the form if there's a topic you'd want to hear more about or if you think you have a topic you want to talk about or if there's guests that we should be talking to. But, Emmy, Jennifer, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for having us. We appreciate the opportunity. Yeah, thank you.

Kevin Stoller (51:31.928)
Views and opinions expressed on the Better Learning Podcast are those of myself as an individual and my guests and do not necessarily represent the organizations that we work for, the Association for Learning Environments, K-12, Education Leaders Organization, or Second Class Foundation.