Why Space Matters

The belief that space matters, supported by extensive research, has prompted Hawken to invest a significant amount of time and resource in the school’s learning spaces in recent years. Read more about our facilities in each division below.

Click here to read "Why Space Matters", an article from the Hawken Review.

Hawken’s Early Childhood Center provides an environment that supports our nationally recognized early childhood programming. The interior of the new facility resulted from collaboration with Creative Environments Design Collaborative, a nationally known educational design firm, to accommodate Hawken’s unique developmental continuum, which is grounded in the belief that the aesthetic environment plays a significant role in a child’s development. Hawken’s facility enhances programming by inspiring exploration, supporting a range of social learning experiences, and encouraging development of motor skills.

Early Childhood students in the Forest Program embrace the outdoors as their classroom. The primary outdoor learning space, known as Base Camp, is nestled in Poutasse Woods, named in honor of Charlie Poutasse, a beloved longtime science teacher at Hawken. Base Camp features a raised, covered platform, a community table for gatherings, and countless opportunities for discovery and exploration. The Lyndhurst campus also boasts athletic fields, meadows, and a large open green space, affectionately called The Great Beyond. In the event of inclement weather or for specific activities, Forest Program classes have access to a dedicated indoor space.

Central to Hawken’s Early Childhood Center is the Nido, which features flexible and aesthetic design elements to create an environment that inspires and motivates students to engage in a variety of learning activities and learning styles. As the director of the Early Childhood program notes, “The environment invites the children to interact with it; the natural world is the most complex to navigate because it engages all of our senses and promotes the greatest cognitive growth.”

Recent renovations and expansions to the Lower School provide a classroom environment that facilitates Hawken's innovative curriculum. Instructional spaces in the Lower School have been intentionally designed to enable one-on-one time between student and teacher, support small group work for targeted learning, and provide space for larger community gatherings. Instead of confining students to classrooms for the entire day, the building features common spaces and areas for small group study to enable collaboration among and between students and teachers. Our dedicated science labs ensure that students get hands-on experience in controlled environments; our music and art studios nurture their innate creativity, and our outdoor classroom, Poutasse Woods, enables students to explore and interact with the natural world without leaving our school grounds.  

As you walk through Hawken’s Middle School, you may notice that there are few hallways. Instead, the building is structured around identical clusters of classrooms called “pods,” one for each grade level. These pods were intentionally designed to provide opportunities for your child to connect and converse within his or her grade-level community.

While there are times when it is advantageous and appropriate to gather as an entire Middle School community, the pods provide students in each grade their own space. And because the entire grade can be seated in the pod common areas, students can gather to address logistics or to discuss a particular issue at hand. In this environment, your child and with his or her classmates will be called upon to become problem solvers and to take ownership in defining the culture and character of their community.

As one teacher put it, “Pods promote the idea in each grade level of having a space that’s just yours. Our sixth graders have a space where they can just be sixth graders and our eighth graders have a space where they can just be eighth graders. It gives them a nice freedom to just wear the skin that they’re wearing. And sixth graders and eighth graders are really different people.”

"The individual grade-level pods in the Middle School are at the heart of our daily interaction with students. They are the hub in which kids attend their core classes, yet more than this, they are the places where we get to know students as individuals outside the academic arena. Pod meetings with every member of the class present offer information, updates, and chances to celebrate and laugh on a daily basis.

 

I think one of my favorite parts of the day has become the early morning. I've taken to seating myself at a table near the middle of our seventh Grade pod and I can greet every student as they start their school day with inquiries about everything under the sun: from how their sports team did the day before, to how much snow might be coming our way, to how the Cavs played last night. 

 

We are lucky to have physical space that supports and builds our relationships with kids. The strength of these relationships has a tremendously positive correlation to our work with students within the classroom."

Stirn Hall, the new academic building at Hawken’s Gates Mills campus, opened in August of 2016. In addition to the new media and fabrication labs, the new science center, a café, and a learning commons, the facility features expanded classroom space and mobile furniture to support active learning activities including performance, simulations.

Liberal use of glass between classrooms, common spaces and faculty offices reflects Hawken’s commitment to openness and transparency. The central learning commons, café, and additional common spaces - varied in size to accommodate individual study, small and large group work, and social activities - foster a sense of community that is central to Hawken’s ideals. Also noteworthy is the building’s inspirational and aspirational features; the building offers the direct views out to nature in all directions and features an inspiring 30-foot cathedral commons.

At the Mastery School of Hawken, the campus essentially extends to the entire city. The school itself is located in several buildings in University Circle - an extraordinary neighborhood, unique in the greater Midwest. This urban mecca provides a host of opportunities and world-class intellectual capital. Here, opportunities for problem-based learning abound.

Within walking distance of the Mastery School of Hawken are more than 200 non-profit organizations and businesses, many of which are eager to let high school students work with them on some of their challenges. The Mastery School’s proximity to many of the most engaging and innovative cultural, educational, arts, and medical institutions in the world and to the historic neighborhood of Glenville affords us the chance to deepen and broaden the connections we have built there since the opening of the Gries Center in 2010.

The Mastery School campus itself provides a welcoming home-base with upgraded, state-of-the-art classrooms and facilities where students and teachers can collaborate, problem-solve, reflect, and share all that they have discovered and continue to discover in their educational journeys. The campus also includes a dormitory for those who choose to enroll at Hawken as boarding students.

Visit the University Circle website at universitycircle.org to see just how many amazing organizations and programs are accessible to our students.