Back to the Agora: Workable Solutions for Small Urban School Facilities. ERIC Digest

The ancient Athenian "agora" functioned as a marketplace for ideas and commerce and offered an ideal place for teaching and learning. This digest suggests adapting such a model to modern needs and describes successful small schools that have done so while reducing costs. Research shows tha...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author Lawrence, Barbara Kent
Format Report
LanguageEnglish
Published For full text: http://www 01.09.2003
Subjects
Building Conversion
Building Innovation
Change Strategies
Educational Change
Educational Finance
Elementary Secondary Education
ERIC Digests
House Plan
Partnerships in Education
School Buildings
School Community Relationship
School Restructuring
Shared Resources and Services
Small Schools
Urban Schools
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Summary:The ancient Athenian "agora" functioned as a marketplace for ideas and commerce and offered an ideal place for teaching and learning. This digest suggests adapting such a model to modern needs and describes successful small schools that have done so while reducing costs. Research shows that small schools offer many advantages for learning and for supporting communities. Physical structures should promote good educational programs. Schools need to be flexible, promote personalization of learning, be adaptable to population shifts, provide opportunities for community engagement, and be efficient. Several successful and innovative small urban schools have created places that are the modern equivalent of the agora, places where students and adults can interact with the community, share resources, and learn from each other. Strategies used by communities to keep their schools small and local include sharing facilities with other schools, reconfiguring large high schools, sharing with an education partner, sharing with a noneducation partner, sharing with the community, leasing space in the community, using the small facility in new ways, leasing the whole facility, and capitalizing on the facility. (Contains 18 references) (TD)