Abstract: Our schools are in the midst of an urgent mental and physical health emergency. Learners need to be problem solvers, critical thinkers and modifiers of their world. It is our responsibility to demand the most seamless and transparent set of tools as our students learn to analyze, question, elaborate, refine and evaluate their own ideas... to Create and to Innovate. Unfortunately, tens of thousands of our schools continue to be deemed unsafe and or unhealthy for teaching and learning. By example, asthma is a leading cause of absenteeism that can be readily solved under concise educational and action plans driven by policy shifts. On the mental health side, large percentages of anxiety are continuing to suppress performance. Education has long empowered brave educators to over encumber classroom environments to a point of discomfort negatively affecting the health, safety and potential of its learners. Designers, at times, continue the delivery of “kitchen cabinets” within classrooms without the knowledge that this antiquated harboring device is simply not suited for today’s set of resources. Subsequential responses of simply removing all available cabinetry, shifting the emphasis on wheels, is placing an additional burden on space. In this session, we will discuss the cultural disconnects that permitted us to arrive at this point in time, indicate rules for appropriate systematic solutions, provide guidelines and recommendations for stuff, as well as the agile movement and housing of these resources. Our work is constantly heightened to reinforce emerging pedagogical demands of AGILE environments supporting “simple and easy” pivots. We further understand that authentic learning can be quite messy, thus the necessity to recognize the requirements and disconnects of space as it relates to clutter. Teacher testimonials indicate decluttered environments can be fully embedded with agency and inclusion. Let’s face the music! This presentation was created with the intent to ignite curiosity through a lens to empower transformational change and ultimately support significant changes in educational policy as well as funding mechanisms within education. We must raise the bar on transformational change of historic purchasing and funding mechanisms which sacrifice the very missions we have placed upon the shingles representing our personalized educational SPACES.

Learning Objectives:

1. Understanding that decluttering can be a systematic approach to a built environment to modify historically cultural approaches to the management of stuff that is fully embedded with agency and inclusion.
2. Analyze how our antiquated mindsets are preventing us from moving forward even after the emphatic realization that we must do better to align ALL aspects of the physical work to the intent of education moving forward.
3. Realization that authentic space can be successfully achieved through an event of critical collaboration of instruction and curriculum defining the correct range of tools.
4. Establish the mind shift that not only do teachers have too much stuff… but they will ALWAYS have too much stuff within active learning and it’s our responsibility to create seamless designed solutions to support AGILE learning.
5. Understanding our choices may be enabled by our environment, providing limitations to seamless transformation within education.