In this episode of All Things Marketing and Education, Elana sits down with Dr. Robert Dillon, School Designer, Author, Speaker, and Learner. Bob, as she likes to call him, has earned a doctorate in educational leadership and administration, and brings over 20 years of experience as a teacher, school principal, and director of innovation at multiple school districts; he is the author of five books, including the ones we dive into today: The Space: A Guide for Leaders.

In this episode, Bob and Elana discuss the crucial role of redesigning learning spaces in education, emphasizing that it's far more than just updating bulletin boards. They delve into the significant impact of classroom design on student engagement, sense of belonging, and overall well-being.

Make sure to listen until the end, as Bob shares practical tips for educators to create flexible, inclusive, and technology-integrated learning environments. They also explore the relationship between physical learning spaces and EdTech products, highlighting the importance of considering equity and the needs of marginalized students in the design process.

Whether you're already back in school or preparing for the upcoming year, this episode is packed with valuable tips and ideas to help you optimize your classroom space.

Here's the link to the episode show notes.

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Mentioned in this episode:

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Dr. Robert Dillon:

Students that are most impacted by learning spaces are the students that have been marginalized by the system for a long time.

Elana Leoni:

Welcome, everyone, to our podcast, All Things Marketing and Education. I'm Elana Leoni, and I've devoted my entire career to helping education brands build their brand awareness, engagement, and ultimately grow their lead. Every week, my guests, who range from educators, to EdTech entrepreneurs, to experts in the field will all share tips, strategies, and insights in either social media, content marketing, and community building. I'm so excited to be your guide, to help transform your marketing efforts into something that's truly authentic and consistently provides value for your audience. Enjoy.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of All Things Marketing and Education. This week, I sat down with Dr. Robert Dillon, also known as Bob Dillon. He is a school designer and author, a speaker, and a lifelong learner. Bob got his doctorate of education in educational leadership and administration, and he has racked up 20 plus years as a teacher, a school principal, and director of innovation at multiple school districts. That is a lot of knowledge.

He is the author of five books on top of that, and one of which is on the topic we're going to be discussing today, on classroom design and spaces that work best to foster learning. People do not talk about this enough, so I am so excited to have him on the show. Specifically, we're going to be talking about his book, Redesigning Learning Space, The Space: A Guide for Educators, and Powerful Parent Partnerships. I have known Bob for decades, as we tended to run in the same kind of conference circles during my days working at Edutopia. He always struck me as a super articulate, passionate, and out-of-the-box thinker, and someone super passionate about soccer, which I always thought funny. But his passion for redesigning learning spaces with an emphasis specifically on inclusion and equity was just so refreshing to me.

So when I saw him again this year at an EdTech conference, one of the first things I said to him very bluntly is, "Hey, come on my show." And he said yes, so here we are. During this episode, Bob and I talk about the importance of redesigning learning spaces in education, and it's not what you're thinking, folks, it's not the fluff. We're talking more about how do we get beyond making bulletin boards pretty, and decorations? We talk about things that truly work to foster learning in equitable spaces. We get into the nitty-gritty of the impact of classroom design, on awesome things like student engagement, sense of belonging, and overall student well-being. And make sure to stick around to the end, when Bob shares some really great practical tips for educators on how you can create flexible, inclusive, and technology-integrated learning environments. I know this is all about you educators, and I hope it's super helpful.

For you EdTech folks, we get into the relationship between physical learning spaces and EdTech products, which we don't talk about anywhere. This is very awesome, intriguing stuff, and we emphasize the importance of considering equity and marginalized students when designing learning spaces. So educators, whether you're already back in school or you're prepping for the school year ahead, this episode is packed full of awesome tips and ideas. So I hope you all enjoy.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to All Things Marketing and Education. Today I am excited to talk to Dr. Robert Dillon, known as my friend Bob Dillon, and we're going to be talking about all sorts of awesome things. Bob, welcome to the show.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Hey, thanks for having me. It's good to be here.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, we were just joking behind the scenes is that we've known each other probably for now over a decade, back and forth, of just friends of friends, running into each other at conferences. But I ran into you recently, I hadn't seen you in a while, and I said, "You're coming on my show," so I'm glad you're here.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Hey, we've made it happen. That's right. We're busy people, but not too busy for this.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, and I've always wanted to pick your brain about the topic that we're going to be talking about, around classroom design and classroom spaces. I don't feel like people talk about it enough, and it's so important. So let's get right into that. You have written lots of books, and I'm so impressed by that, but let's talk about Redesigning Learning Spaces. It's called Redesigning Learning Spaces, The Space: A Guide for Educators. I love how it's packed about awesome things that teachers, school administrators, educational designers can do to kind of get rid of the status quo. I feel like we get so stuck in like, "Oh, this is how it's always been, so here we go." Why don't you talk a little bit about what inspired you to write the book, and we'll go from there?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, the inspiration story, it's so great, and it makes me smile every time I talk about it, is I was a middle school principal at an expeditionary learning school. So we were taking kids outside to learn, which is fantastic, and I saw all these kids just come to life, and then we'd bring them back into the classroom, and they just wilt. And I was like, "We can't keep allowing that to happen." So somewhere along the way, as a principal, I put a check mark next to that and said, "I'm going to do something about that someday." And as my career progressed, had an opportunity to start talking about where kids learn.

And so I'm a big proponent of outdoor education, I'm a big proponent of experiential learning, and then whatever we can do to bring those things into the classroom. So started really talking about the ins and outs of design, and kind of making it a passion project that I've now been really working on for about eight years, and has culminated in some books, and we can dig into those as well.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, and it's kind of like when you introduce any kind of pedagogy in the classroom that it excites kids, and then they have to go back to normal, and it makes your heart simultaneously so happy, because you see them light up, and then they have to go back. And it feels like that was the experience you had when you're like, "Oh, gosh, experiential learning, let's bring it to life. And oh, by the way, you're going back to this drab classroom," right?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Well, and we know this as human beings, when we're in places that are dark, don't have fresh air, or just don't have the right amount of stimulus, that this is why we turn the lights off in our bedrooms when we go to sleep. We don't thrive in those moments. So if we want kids to thrive, let's do what we know from both common sense and research, and enter those things into the classroom equation. Yeah, and when teachers do, it's been really good.

Elana Leoni:

So let's talk about that. Before we get into the how, because I'm going to get into the nitty-gritty with you, let's talk about the why. Right now is an interesting time in education, where budgets are being cut, people are having to prioritize. People are looking ahead to the school year and trying to figure out, "Gosh, what makes the cut, and how does this align with my strategic plans, my learning outcomes, the things I'm accountable for?" So as a school leader, but then, "As a teacher, how do I want to mix it up, and make things fresh, and make my learning environment just as exciting for me as it is for my kids?" But let's talk about why would they do this, why would they prioritize this?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah. Well, what we're finding is that when classrooms aren't well designed, they are really headwinds for teachers, and we just can't afford headwinds right now. It just makes teaching hard. If you ask teachers, "Can you teach under a tree? Can you teach on the savanna? Can you teach in the desert?" They would be, "Yes, yes, and yes," but they'd be doing it despite the space and not because of the space.

And so why not get those things out of your way? And I think the joy of my work is that, yes, it's great to design a brand-new building, but 90%, 80% of my work is optimizing what people already have. And so it's not about, "Do we have the budget?" It's about how do we make the best of what we have based on the input of students, what you teach, alignment to mission, the culture of your classroom? All of those pieces really help our teachers be the professionals at a really high level that they can be. So it's pretty amazing.

Elana Leoni:

And I know, and you've known by just walking around these spaces, I've seen the impact it has on student engagement in particular. Are there any other things that you're seeing that you're like, "Gosh, now, because of this space, students are more likely to do X"? What are those things that you've seen around?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, engagement's certainly one of them, but I think number two is that, just the sense of belonging and welcoming. And we are seeing right now, students staying away from school because they don't feel safe there, whether it's psychological or physical safety. We're seeing kids stay away from school because they just don't have a connection there. And if you go to places that suck the energy out of you, like vampire spaces, why would you want to go there? So both of those things. And then the other thing is I'm always saying to teachers, "Your classroom either increases your stress or decreases the stress of the students." And I think we all should be striving for classrooms where if we lower stress, we get better performance, bad stress. There's good stress, but the bad stress. So along with engagement, reduction in stress, greater sense of belonging and welcoming, that's a pretty good reason to lean into this work.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, and I've seen when class spaces are more flexible as well, collaboration is easier, it's easier to physically move around. Maybe they're a bit more creative with each other. Maybe we start transitioning to front stage on the stage a little bit, where we're all contributing and just learning from each other. I think sometimes we're like, "Oh, it's just this beautiful thing. You change your bulletin board and maybe change your desk and there's your classroom space." But if you rethink it, and I love how you say, "Work within what you currently have," because we're in education, that is our jam. We work with what we have, and teachers know that more than anybody, right?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, and you're right. I mean, we can't keep saying, "Personalized learning, personalized learning," and do it in standardized spaces. So we really do have to allow period one to feel different than period two. We need to allow morning block in elementary to feel different than the afternoon block, and we have to be able to move those things around in the room, both on the macro and the micro, for the things you said, right? Practicing collaboration, practicing all those other durable skills. It's really hard to do those things when you're really locked into a bunch of rows. And it's actually kind of hard when a teacher's made the classroom so pretty that it can't kind of be functional. And so we have to fight back against that, too. You walk into a room, and the best bulletin boards in the world, and here's where we put the walls up for open house, but that never transitions as the year goes on. So flexible and agile, keywords to the work I'm doing, for sure.

Elana Leoni:

Great. So I always want to address the yes-butters or what we lovingly call haters, and people that have maybe their truth is potentially the prevalent myths of, "Oh, we don't have time to do this. That doesn't help this." So why don't we address some of those myths that you just hate? Let's debunk them a little bit.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, I mean, one of the things I get all the time is, "I have to keep everything that I have in my classroom. Every piece of construction paper that's no longer the color that it was when it came out of the bin, every marker that still doesn't work." There's a real scarcity mentality. So when I'm asking teachers to make the room bigger by minimizing, reducing, and decluttering, I get a lot of, "But I can't, I might need this a year from now." So we really do have to push back, though, that a cluttered classroom is really hard on our students, visually. And so that's one piece.

The second piece is that the time element, really, I'm often saying, "Hey, look at one wall of your classroom for three minutes every week. Just make sure that everything up there still supports learning," because often we put stuff up, we forget about it, it's no longer needed. It actually can impair learning in some ways, if students have already learned a topic and we leave it up on the board, we're not asking them to then recall it from their own brain, we're just asking, "Recall it from the wall," so we can take those things down. But yeah, I think the biggest pushback I get is about the amount of stuff necessary, the decorations necessary, and the other pushback just becomes, "I share this room, I don't have ownership of it." So we work through that as well.

Elana Leoni:

You're kind of bringing me back nostalgia of circa third grade, and I don't know if teachers still do this, but this is old school and probably not best practice, but one of the walls we had was stars. And if you completed your multiplication, you got certain levels of stars. So it was kind of like if you didn't have a star, you were feeling ashamed, but it might motivate a certain type of kid. And although it potentially changed, it was kind of like this weird wall that's probably not best practice anymore, but I'm like, "Oh, I remember that happening with my classroom spaces."

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, I still go in rooms and have these big data walls, though, and I feel like blaming and shaming isn't way to motivate. And we just know that you're right, a couple of students, that's probably going to motivate, but the rest of them, it's either going to create a fixed mindset, it's going to create a situation where kids are like, "Well, I can't succeed anyway, so why keep trying?" So we definitely have to be careful about what we put on the walls.

I'm sometimes saying to teachers like, "If you put birthdays up there and you put every month of the year when the year starts, you're committed to that thing being on the wall right there all year. And so just think about what you put up and what the calendar commitment to each of those things are." So we get real granular when talking about those things with teachers, but teachers don't get explicit training about classroom design. Most pre-prep programs for teachers don't have even a mention of how do you set up your classroom, design your classroom. So we really are starting from scratch. And sometimes, teachers say, "Well, I set mine up like person next door or how I liked it as a third-grader."

Elana Leoni:

I like that you had this frame, and maybe you don't use it as your main thesis, but I really loved it when you said, "Does your classroom reduce stress and does it help you all thrive?" Do you want to go in and feel like, "Ah, I feel included. This is a soothing potential place of safety. But also, I could go read up in that reading nook, and I could move that desk over here, and work with so-and-so"? But having that foundation of reducing stress, but creating a place that we can all thrive together.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, I mean, now more than ever we have students that are lonely, isolated, disillusioned with education. We have to allow our spaces to be part of the healing of that, and reducing stress, that sense of belonging, that sense that your voice matters, the sense that teachers are actually taking your feedback, not only about the instructional model, but also the learning model, a learning space model and saying like, "Hey, let's co-design this together. Let's work on this, and I don't want to design for you, but with you." So if you really boil down a lot of my work, it's like, how often are you asking students about the design of the classroom, and then making the micro adjustments that helps them to learn? If we just had every teacher in the country doing that, we'd really be moving things forward.

Elana Leoni:

Well, one of the things that, when we talk about learning spaces, it's kind of like one of those home improvement shows where we're like, "Just show me the really cool spaces," and I know you've seen them all, and you've probably been a part of redesigning very cool spaces. So let's talk a little bit about the coolest learning spaces you've seen, and maybe tell us the before and after, what you saw immediately on the impact of teachers, staff, and students.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, I mean, when you think about impacting the most students, you're thinking about common spaces. You're thinking about entryways, you're thinking about libraries, you're thinking of other places that are the heart of the school. But we are recently working on a project that a cafeteria is also an indoor playground, and so it's not in place yet, but before we all know the picture and the smell of the elementary cafeteria, you're like, "Oh, we can still smell it," but what if that could be used during the day for kids to play? How cool is that? So we're going to have this pretty cool cafeteria/indoor playground, that's going to be fantastic. That's coming soon. Another is just a library that not only transformed a high school, but it became the place to be. And part of it was just being able to see through the whole space. You know how many libraries have those really tall six-foot shelves, no sight lines?

And then, we really worked with the students to say, "What types of Micro environments do you want in here?" So there's 50 micro environments in this pretty good-sized library that I'm really impressed. And micro environment might be a chair and an end table, but it might be also a little reading nook, but it might also be a place where 10 people can gather or a door that can close. But I love the fact that that's reality. And then last, I've just been working with a high school in Minnesota that built these amazing learning studios, so big, open entry area that has seven classrooms all around it, that kids can kind of pour into these common spaces. Sometimes, you can open up between, so it's a real fresh think on what a high school department could be. Like, "This is the English department that are all in here and they're all collaborating."

And my favorite piece of feedback was a brand-new teacher said, "These types of spaces give me visual mentorship." And I was like, "Whoa." He said, "I get to see, in real time, every day, every hour, veteran teachers doing little things that I would've never picked up over the course of the year, whether it's how to get kids organized, how to bring kids' attention back together, how they use proximity," but they're actually looking across the learning studio and they can see it in real time. And I think that's an unspoken problem that we have with new teachers. We put them behind a door, they don't get to see much in the way of learning. We put them in these spaces that are acoustically sound, make sense, the sight lines are good, but they can still see great teaching happening. Our teachers get better, faster, and that's great for kids.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah. I am just head nodding over here, because one of the things we have the hardest thing around education is the silos, the loneliness. And you and I were back on the Twitters and circa 15 years ago, and that was our only way to really connect with other teachers. And it felt like I was more likely to connect to another teacher in potentially another country or across the country than I was in my own school. And I'd hear that from educators, and that was the only way for them to judge, "Am I doing what's right? How do I learn from others?" So they went to Twitter, because we were so isolated, and we still are, but I love approaching it from a space and say, "It doesn't have to be that hard. Maybe it's just X or Y. but how do we create flow? How do we create visual line of sight?"

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, I mean, innovation is a lonely game. You look around, "Am I the only one trying this? Am I going to get my head cut off for doing this?" So being able to look and be like, "No, I am on the right track, and here's some things I can continue to grow and do," that's good for all of us. And so space can allow for that. And really, just excited that more and more schools and districts know this is important, and they may need the next 5 to 10 years to get the budget in the right place or the priorities in the right place. But there are a few places now, I would say eight years ago, different, but there are a few places now that are just like, "We're good with our spaces, we don't need to do anything." There really is a sense of the next generation of this work is really ahead of us.

Elana Leoni:

You mentioned this briefly, is that school spaces aren't necessarily just classroom spaces, and all of these other spaces, whether it be the entryway, the hallway, the cafeteria, they all contribute to this sense of belonging, this reduction of stress. That is a little bit outside of a teacher's scope. How do we talk to these school leaders? And even if I'm a teacher, how do I get my school leader to support what I'm doing, to rethink my space? And there's a lot of things they could do. So how do we get them involved and be a partner along this work?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, that's what I heard for about five or six years as I started this work, teachers going, "We get it, but this won't grow and this won't amplify unless we're doing it across the building." And that's what went from the book, The Space: A Guide for Educators, which is super easy. Take the book home, we'll get it on Friday, come back on Monday, and be able to do stuff right now in their classroom. But those teachers were saying, "We read the book, we're doing the stuff, but you need to talk to our leaders."

And so The Space: A Guide for Leaders, a couple of years ago, comes out, and it really does start to say, "How can you have a student design team in your school? How can you have a standing committee that is about design? How can you lead this by thinking about the entryway, or building the office, the hallways, all the places that principals have a lot of design?" They can make those changes in those spaces. And so we've influenced a lot of leaders. That space is the nonverbal culture of your school. It speaks so loudly, and so we've gotten leaders to say, "If you want to shape your culture, you have to shape your space."

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, and I'm thinking with my school leader hat on, where they're kind of tunnel vision of like, "Hey, I get it. I've got some priorities," but the more we can connect it to things like absenteeism, which is in the news everywhere right now, let's get kids back to school, and student engagement, and all of the things, like the improving academic outcomes. If we can connect the dots a little bit, and I know that that's hard sometimes, because there's a lot of things that contribute to those things, but have you seen anything or been able to connect the dots a little bit with any research around if we rethink our spaces, these signals will then maybe affect the outcomes that school leaders really, truly... I mean, school leaders care about everything, but the things that they're ultimately accountable for?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, you're right. I don't think it's easy to say space design, academic achievement, but I think the research is pretty clear. Increased engagement and increased student satisfaction are prerequisites for great academic success. And so whatever we can do to shape those two things, we're putting ourselves in the best possible position for academic success. So I think that's how I frame that to leaders. But now, we're also thinking about teacher hiring and teacher retention. If you want your teachers to continue to want to be at your school, put them in spaces that value them as professionals.

And there's a lot of things we can do that won't blow out the budget, that just says, "We want to set the stage for you to be amazing, and we're going to do that through our space." And I know stories now where new teachers have had multiple job offers, happens now more than ever, and they're saying, "Can I go see the space I'm going to teach in before I decide if I want to come here as opposed to somewhere else?" And if that's happening, we're in more and more states where school choice is a reality, and where are you going to choose to go? The a 100-year-old building that hasn't been touched, the 10-year-old building that there's attention to the space? It's going to matter more than ever, and leaders need to hear that.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, I was wondering if you were going to go there. I'm like, "Yes." It also is around student enrollment, which we're seeing schools across the country with low enrollment that are closing down, and they're competing because of all the school choice, too. And then, the teacher retention is so important. And if I have a school space that is flexible, that's inclusive, that allows teacher-to-student relationships to potentially thrive more than they normally would, there's all sorts of research around relationships and the student-teacher relationship leading to academic outcomes and so on. So yeah, you got me thinking, really good stuff.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Well, I would also say that recently I've been thinking a little bit about wraparound services, more schools than ever doing that, right? School psychologists and outside counseling, and how many times are we in schools where they're like, "That closet over there is available. You can go sit in that closet with kids and try to improve their mental health." So not only are we talking about the academic programming, we're thinking about all the spaces necessary for wraparound services, and being really thoughtful about how we're taking care of that part of our programming as well.

Elana Leoni:

So important. So for the educators listening that are potentially looking at their classrooms, and you've convinced them, so they're going to try to make a little bit of an effort, let's say, what are some small things that you think that they could do to get started, and maybe inspire them on medium-level things or even high-level things, but what they're thinking about, it's just them in the classroom, let's say they don't share the space, just make it super simple? What are some things that you've seen that really make a difference?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Well, just a challenge of like, "Go find 10 things that you don't need and get rid of them." That means you can give them to somebody else if you need to. You can put them in your trunk for a while, if you need a place to put them in purgatory. But just that effort to declutter, because it's really hard to re-envision our spaces when we are in the same exact visual surroundings. So you have to sometimes take everything out or take some things out to do that. So that's one, just start to declutter. That's easy, it's free. Number two, ask students about every two weeks, "Hey, what about this space is inhibiting learning? What about this space is supporting your learning?" Great way to do that. And then third, go into other spaces with a lens for learning design. Oftentimes, we'll go into our colleague's classroom, "Hey, how are you doing this morning?"

But go in there looking for ideas, and oftentimes, we can transfer those back, and that's really easy as that goes. And so I think those are three really easy ones. And I think the next ones, start to think how do we create more space for movement? And sometimes, that means reducing the space confetti of the classroom. So space confetti happens when you have all of these one-by-one, two-by-two square foot spaces in the classroom that can't be used for anything else. So now, we're talking about pushing desks together in groups of fours, and sixes, and eight, teaching kids how to do that. Look for ways to get kids standing up, so powerful for kids to move, and so good for the brain. So lots of little things we can do, and notice that isn't buy something, or go to Ikea, or go grab a piece of furniture from somewhere else. All of those things are available to us and they get the ball rolling.

Elana Leoni:

And your first comment of decluttering, I was like, "Yes," but I feel like my educators are going to say, "Can I just organize all my stuff in these..." You know how those big drawers that they have? Is that okay, or you're saying get rid of stuff, right?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yes/and, right? One of the things that I also mention is about storage density. I can't tell you how many drawers I look at where people are like, "I have nowhere to go," and 50% of the drawer is empty. And so sometimes, it's about the right size buckets and the right size bins. Sometimes, it is about getting rid of things and sometimes, it's about reordering things, but you don't have to throw everything out. But if you haven't used it in a year, if you haven't used it in two years, maybe you start to ask yourself, "Does it need to be here, in this room, making the room move from 800 square feet, to 700 square feet, to 600 square feet because of the amount of stuff that's in the room?"

Elana Leoni:

And as someone who lives on social media and specifically listens to educators, I want to warn them, don't let perfect and beautiful spaces be the enemy of just like, "Let's try it, let's be good enough." Because we can all look at those beautiful Pinterest spaces, and now they're all over TikTok and Instagram. And that can be a little deflating, because you're like, "Oh, I want to do that, but I can't do it like that." You want to talk a little bit about that? Because you did mention it before.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah. I mean, don't decorate design. There are design elements of classrooms. There are research based pieces that are out there. If you're looking for ideas, whole YouTube channel, for me, that's the Two Minutes on Space Design. I put one out every week, they're super practical things you can do, but they're not saying, "Go buy new border." And they're not about saying, "If you go on to this place and order this thing, your classroom's going to be better."

But I do talk about things like norms and expectations. We do have to explicitly teach kids how to use the flexible, agile, modern classroom. We can't make assumptions that they're going to know how to behave in a space they've never been. I don't know how to behave in a space I've never been, right? As adults, we go into places and you're like... I don't know. The first time I went into a mosque, I'm like, "What am I supposed to do?" When you enter a space you've never been, you don't know how to behave. And so kids are entering new, flexible, modern classrooms. Don't set ourselves up for failure by not teaching kids how to use the space.

Elana Leoni:

And potentially, that is an awesome experience, because we're now treating them more adults or ownership of like, "Hey, we want to have this conversation of expectations, but there's this built-in trust." It's not like we don't trust you. We're going to make it super uncomfortable and rigid, and that builds that foundation, right?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Elana Leoni:

I've never once have had, ever, a conversation with an educator when I was in school about that. And in fact, it was the opposite of like, "How can I mess this furniture up of putting gum and all the gross stuff?" because no one ever talked to us about it, right?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, and so sometimes, the yes-butters will say, "We tried this and it didn't work." And I'll say, "Okay, you put new stuff in there and you hope that it worked like magic." And sometimes, it does disrupt for a short period of time, but on average, new furnishings in a classroom that you've previewed, you've talked about, you've discussed, a week to two weeks of some level of tumult. And then, it takes off. It's not two months. It's not two years. It takes maybe about two weeks, and that's on the long end. And then kids don't even... "Okay, we know how to do this. We know what we're doing, and we're co-authors of the space. We have agency, we have movement, we have choice. Wow, okay, now we're really engaged." And so the benefits way outweigh any pushback on that.

Elana Leoni:

Wait, so you're saying you can't just drop something in a classroom and expect it to work, which is-

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Elana Leoni:

I guess we laugh, because the fundamental thing about why EdTech fails is the lack of implementation support to really make sure that it's adjusted to your unique environment, and the the educator knows how to use it just as well as the kids, and there's feedback and tweaking. So you're saying, "Just don't drop it and expect it to work."

Dr. Robert Dillon:

And a lot of my work with schools and districts is that alignment, right? Like, "Okay, you're going to have new furnishings or you're going to have a new way of thinking about your furnishings. You have technology tools that you're going to use. When your furnishings change, the way you use your technology tools can change, the way you can do instruction changes." So how do I help with that alignment for teachers to think about how they teach, what they teach, and where they are doing the teaching? So that's really where the work comes in. And if folks are forward thinking and they want their furnishings not to plateau, but to really make an impact, they're taking time to make that alignment happen.

Elana Leoni:

All right, we've talked about all of the things, some practical things, and for those of you saying, "Gosh, I want to follow Bob Dillon on YouTube and get all this stuff," we're going to put it all in the show notes, so don't worry. And his contact information, and we'll throw in some research and all the fun things in the show notes. But we've talked a lot to educators and some school leaders in this podcast, but I know a lot of you are in EdTech and you're like, "What the heck, Elana? Give me something. How does this relate to what I'm doing?" So I did not forget you.

For those of the folks in EdTech listening, how do you see the physical learning environments complement the learning pedagogy, and how do we see EdTech products evolving to align with this new vision of spaces that are more flexible, collaborative? Let's talk about that relationship with, "We know educators have this tech stack of all the things they're doing in the classroom." Sometimes, it may complement and sometimes, it might not for flexible spaces. Have you thought about that dissection?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think we are going to move to more classrooms where some of them are really tech rich. And I'm not talking to my Makerspace, I'm really talking about you might have three third-grade classrooms, where one is more of a quiet zone, and maybe it is a reading space or where kids are taking a test. You're going to have one that's a little noisier and bigger, and you're going to have another one that maybe is a little more flexible and has a little bit of both. But I think, as EdTech moves forward, thinking about teaching teams, clusters of teachers, as opposed to every piece of what we have has to be in every room of a building. Now, that doesn't sell more stuff, but what it does is align to a philosophy that says, "If we want our rooms to be big, and billowy, and agile, and flexible, we can't keep jamming things into them."

So we're going to have to let teacher teams do better jobs of scheduling their rooms. "Hey, I'm going to need to be in there for a couple hours, then you're going to be over here." We see this happening a lot more in these kind of learning studio schools, where a lot more flexibility... There's home spaces, but they're bouncing around. So I think that's a piece. And then, I just finished designing for a community college an AR/VR lab simulation space. So I think more of these simulation sort of things, whether they're... I love the SEL virtual reality stuff that's happening, but also, a student can step into this bay, have an experience, come back out of the bay, work with their classmates in collaboration. We're seeing this in healthcare, we're seeing this in the trades. I think we're going to see a lot more of these kind of individual tech spaces, where kids can go in and come back out, think audio/video studios. None of that's going to go away, because those are all forever skills that tech's going to allow to have happen.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, and as tech evolves, it is aligning with what you're saying so much more. It got me thinking of now it's super easy for now we're mostly one-to-one, which we weren't before. And that allows collaboration, but in the rows, that makes it kind of silly. So in a way, technology evolving, it's also forcing us to rethink spaces and vice-versa. Now, it's like I have quick, easy, sometimes even free software where I can use my phone or my iPad and start sharing on a screen, super easy. 10 years ago, that wouldn't have been the case. So in a way, they're both kind of complementing each other to move, collaborate, create.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah. Doing that in breakout rooms, doing that in rooms outside of the classroom, doing that where there's a portable television that's in the hallway, right? We're seeing a lot of ability to kind of use visual displays everywhere. And then, I really do still think there's a ton of power in audio and video development. So whether it's kids are doing podcasts or video creation, we're still going to be in a day and age where video and well-designed video is important. We should be teaching those kids those skills now. And now, we have classrooms and spaces that even our youngest learners can do some of this work.

Elana Leoni:

Great. So I know we could talk about classroom spaces for a very long time. Your book goes into it in detail. We're going to link to your book in the show notes. But on a high level, you talk about the importance and themes around flexibility, like what we talked about a little bit in our podcast, inclusivity, technology integration, which we kind of just hit on, but really making sure, how do we effectively integrate technology that complements learning space and vice-versa, collaboration, comfort, and aesthetics, and belonging, and things like that?

Community involvement, we didn't talk about as much, but your book talks about it in detail, and research-based design. So for all of you, yes-butters, I want you to get the book too, or even go to ChatGPT, and they can summarize parts of it and say, "Hey, give me the research around it. How should I prioritize it?" So I don't want to ignore all the awesomeness in your book, and we'll put it in the show notes, but there's no way we could get to it all in this podcast. Anything you want to touch on that we haven't talked about that you think is important?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

No, I think we're really starting to see that the students that are most impacted by learning spaces are the students that have been marginalized by the system for a long time. And so I speak about students with neurodiversity, a number of our students that have special needs, and that can be a whole wide list, but we know that those students are adversely affected in even greater ways. Spaces that are nowhere close to being culturally appropriate, we have all kinds of work to do. But for me, if you have a passion like I do to make sure that all kids are supported by their space, this is an area for you to lean into, because it really can make all of our students feel welcome, have a sense of belonging, have a sense of success, push back against years of them feeling like failures in schools. And so it's a big lever that we can pull that goes well beyond just buying new furniture.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that, because sometimes we think about it in terms of vanity, and this will be cool, and school enrollment, and things like that, but we don't think about who's missing now, and who could we potentially include as a result in that beautiful move into thinking with equity in mind, in your learning spaces, as much as you're teaching.

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah.

Elana Leoni:

So all of our guests get this question at the end, and I love it, because we work also hard in education. We are passionate. It is something that can unfortunately drain you, but also inspire you at the same time. But those days where you're just like, "Gosh, I gave it my all and I am no longer a human, I just need to stare at a wall," how do you get back the next day and be charged and ready to go? What fills your cup at the end of the day? And our guests sometimes talk about physical things, mental things, intellectually-stimulating things, but what's your go-to?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah. Well, how about the vista view? So you said staring at a wall. So let's, instead of staring at the wall, let's look 20 feet away, at something away from whatever we're working on for 20 seconds? And it helps to reset our brain. So I have to remind myself, too many moments in front of my computer. So if you can get up, actually step outside, get fresh air, and then take 20 seconds to look 20 feet away, that's a darn good start. So that's super practical.

On a personal level, I will take myself and go for a noticing walk, which is another thing that helps with our design, right? I walk the same square in my neighborhood, and on purpose, to see if I can see something I've never seen before. So, "Has that gutter always been that way? Has that weed always been there?" But when we start to do that, we get better at noticing, we get better at noticing that stuff in our classroom. We kind of get over space blindness. And so it's not only fun and refreshing, but it makes us better designers.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, that's great. Those are all practical things, and as you were talking, I was looking out my window, so thank you for that. Well, Bob, thank you so much for coming on the show. I love that you brought in that practical aspect, but also didn't falter on... We need collectively, as a society, to prioritize this. And here are all these benefits, too. So I got inspired, I got some practical things. So thank you so much. For those of the listeners that are listening, what are some quick, easy places that they can find you on the interwebs?

Dr. Robert Dillon:

Yeah, if you go search Dr. Robert Dillon and education, lots of articles I've written, you get you to the YouTube channel, you get to websites. So Dr. Robert Dillon and education, great Google Search to find all things me.

Elana Leoni:

Yeah, we'll put them all in the show notes as well. So thank you so much, and we'll see you all next time at All Things Marketing and Education. Take care, everyone.

Thanks again for listening to All Things Marketing and Education. If you like what you heard and want to dive deeper, you can find more episodes at leoniconsultinggroup.com\podcast. You can also continue the conversation with us on Twitter, @LeoniGroup, or on LinkedIn. And don't forget, if you enjoyed today's show, make sure to subscribe to our podcast and leave a review. We're so appreciative of every single subscriber and review we get, and it helps us reach even more people that need help. So we'll see you next time on All Things Marketing and Education. Take care.