Chapter 5: Reimagining School Spaces: Collider Classroom as the Postpandemic Classroom With Design Principles

The COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement led schools to reevaluate their practices to better support students as racial and systemic inequities came to light. Though COVID-19 relief expanded resources such as counseling and tutoring, this proved insufficient without deeper systemic change. This chapter explores the collider classroom as a framework built in response to student needs to provide an inclusive learning space through student codesign. Using radical hospitality, social-emotional learning, culturally responsive pedagogy, and reality pedagogy’s “7 C’s” model, using this framework provides a sense of belonging, engagement, and academic success. Using flexible seating, adaptive lighting, music and sound, aromatherapy, and adaptability from classroom input, students help create a classroom where they feel most comfortable and safe to learn. Through student participation in design and feedback, they can build, not just their learning environment, but their social and emotional skills, sense of community, and academic skills. The collider classroom reduces stress, improves neuroplasticity, and increases learning readiness. The success in this model by giving students some agency over their learning environment highlights the potential for the student voice across the board in educational reform.