Introduction

Get back to where you once belonged –Paul McCartney

In 1980, I started my K-12 education career teaching students with severe multiple disabilities in San Diego Unified School District. Over a couple of years I transformed my room into a fun zone. I integrated the classroom with a variety of electrical and battery operated toys and devices with individualized therapeutic equipment for students with varying cognitive challenges and conditions of spastic quadriplegia cerebral palsy. 

I channeled my inner Neil Young and his experience with his son Ben to build a train set operated by individually crafted adaptive switches for each student. The individualized single or multiple switch systems for students were not only used with all the different AC/DC toys we adapted, but we progressed to using those same control devices for individualized augmented and alternative communication (AAC) systems. 

It was an exciting time, I was young and motivated to change my hospital-like classroom into a warm cozy space filled with micro-learning spaces, or what we called 'learning centers' back in the 20th century.

In 1986, I started teaching a general education Kindergarten class and channeled my inner Maria Montessori and Steve Martin by adding lots of cozy furniture, roll carpets on a wall to wall tile floor, and created dozens of different learning centers. 

By the 90's and into the 2000's, I had become a central office special education, magnet schools, and educational technology resource teacher in several positions in the school district. In those various positions, I had visited hundreds of classrooms in about 180 different schools. I saw a lot, but unfortunately in general education K-12 classrooms, I saw most of the same. 

Around 2005, I became very passionate about changing the traditional physical classroom of all the same desks and chairs with more eclectic soft and hard furniture. The teachers who were changing up their classrooms were individuals, all on their own, spending their own money to transform their teaching and learning environment.

In 2009, I walked into Pam Stahlak's 4th grade class at Zamorano Elementary School (pictured below) and I was totally blown away by the learning space she had crafted. 

Several years later, I first heard the term, 'learning studio,' used to describe a problem or project-based learning environment utilizing technology with design thinking, what we would call a 'makerspace' today. In education, terms float around all the time coming and going, but I thought about Pam's class and thought, she's transformed her classroom to a creativity-based learning studio. Since then, I have referred to the now retired Pam Stahlak as, "The godmother of the Learning Studio."

Here is my defintion of a Learning Studio.

A K-12 Learning Studio is a one-of-a kind hybrid of a classroom, studio, and family room designed by the teacher (and students) to form unique *micro learning spaces that can be fixed or are mobile and modular in design.

*Micro Learning Spaces are defined areas within a learning studio equipped with specific materials, technology and/or furniture.

Now several years later, I got involved with new school construction in my district working with technology and furniture vendors. I eventually retired from teaching myself in 2014 and started my own consulting business designing classrooms, libraries and makerspaces. I worked with numerous technology and furniture vendors, creating learning studio-type spaces. 

What I found in my home State of California, is that the majority of school renovation dollars where typically going to libraries or makerspaces. Existing classrooms where getting next to nothing, other than the teacher getting $50-$150 dollars from the PTA or school foundation for the year.

In 2020, I quit my consulting business and decided to start my own non-profit, Project Learning Studio™ with a vision to help teachers in existing classrooms transform their physical learning space.

The Mission of Project Learning Studio™ is to donate: new, sample or overstock furniture and/or technology directly to teachers in K-12 schools wanting to transform their classroom into a 21st century learning space.

Here, a learning studio space is defined in the context of learning in a physical space infused with personalized and collaborative furniture, materials, tools, and technology that enhances everyone's sensory input, physical movement, and psychological well-being.

I think I've come full circle, I'm back to scratching and clawing for furniture and equipment to make a teacher's classroom a safe, motivating, and cozy place for their students to learn. This book reflects that endeavor.

I'm back to where I once belonged.

References

1. website, G. (Last accessed 10th March 2021). The Beatles – Get Back (Single Version) Lyrics | Genius Lyrics. Available at: https://genius.com/The-beatles-get-back-single-version-lyrics
2. website, C. (Last accessed 10th March 2021). StackPath. Available at: https://www.cerebralpalsyguidance.com/cerebral-palsy/types/spastic-quadriplegia/
   
3. website, A. (Last accessed 10th March 2021). What is AAC? - AssistiveWare. Available at: https://www.assistiveware.com/learn-aac/what-is-aac#:~:text=AAC%20is%20short%20for%20Augmentative,has%20difficulties%20communicating%20using%20speech.
4. website, A. (Last accessed 10th March 2021). History of Montessori Education. Available at: https://amshq.org/About-Montessori/History-of-Montessori
5. website, G. (Last accessed 10th March 2021). Pam Stahlak: The godmother of the Learning Studio, 4th Grade, Zamorano Elementary. Available at: https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipPQ2LVEjnXM1fDB8VLpKuawoJFFVQOPqF_ADEYnB5UOrKjX7G3ZaLz5vIxyOV4klQ
   
6. website, Y. (Last accessed 10th March 2021). Neil Young, YouTube. embedded below at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3z09VRZ6to&t=1s