The Tukwila school district consists of five schools--three elementary schools, one middle school, and one high school. Three of the schools are new or recently renovated; the other two were under construction during the 1999-2000 academic year. These two schools, Tukwila Elementary and Thorndyke Elementary, were the primary focus of the partnership, with Tukwila being the most involved. To a lesser degree, Cascade View Elementary also participated. The partnership was based on a blending of university, school district, and eventually city goals. For the School District, the overarching goal was to use the construction of its new school buildings to enhance learning and heighten the sense of school ownership. Teachers who were interested in participating were given teaching release time and classroom support to introduce their students to a variety of design activities. In all, a total of nine classes participated, five at Tukwila Elementary, three at Thorndyke Elementary, and one at Cascade View.

For CEEDS, the partnership was an opportunity for this interdisciplinary group of faculty to explore how outreach to K-12 schools can be integrated into the curriculum of the professional degree programs where they teach. Of the eight disciplines represented in CEEDS, the primary participants in generating proposals for Tukwila's outdoor space were from architecture, landscape architecture, industrial design, and urban design and planning. Consulting participants included education, social work, and forest resources.

As it got underway, this project linked to the goals laid out in the city's comprehensive plan and also to a voluntary effort spearheaded by the Tukwila Parks Commission called the Tukwila Backyard Wildlife Habitat project. Among other concerns, city officials and citizens are interested in improving the city's image and pedestrian accessibility as a way to reducing transiency. They view Tukwila's rich history, culture, and ecology as assets in establishing a unique identity in various sectors of the city, and have plans underway to improve pedestrian amenities.

This chart summarizes specific interests of the major players in the project and illustrates the linkages among those interests.
 

CEEDS	School District	City Council	Parks
Provide opportunities for professional students' involvement in informed public service	Improve parental involvement	Encourage community involvement	Get broad participation in creating backyard habitats
Utilize professional students' skills in design and environmental reclamation	Send a message that Tukwila is a "good place for kids"	Encourage community pride through awareness of ecology, history, and culture	Create a network of open space
Improve professional students' capacities for interdisciplinary collaboration	Improve children's academic performance	Improve the landscape; enhance visual and physical linkages	Achieve certification as a wildlife habitat community

By weaving together the separate interests of various stakeholders, the following shared community-building goals were articulated:

• Engage Tukwila children and their families as partners with university students and faculty to improve Tukwila's outdoor environment

• Design outdoor spaces that promote children's development and make learning fun

• Design outdoor spaces that connect the city's physical and social fabric, while linking schools to their surrounding communities

• Design outdoor spaces that help restore the city's ecology and make visible its history and culture

• Create "big ideas" that require long-range planning, as well as "easy wins" that can be constructed in the near future by children and adults

The Sites of Learning Team

Community-building Activities

The partnership included an array of activities carried out in the Tukwila schools during the 1999-2000 academic year, including teacher workshops, an architecture curriculum that was implemented in first through fourth grade classes, and designs for the school sites that were created by fourth and fifth grade classes. It also resulted in new courses in the university that help prepare students for interdisciplinary collaboration on public sector projects. The centerpiece of this instruction was a week-long design workshop (called a "charrette"), and the programming and follow-up activities that accompanied it. This latter set of university-based activities are the focus of this document .

Programming activities were carried out during winter quarter by students enrolled in an undergraduate seminar. These students were charged with creating parameters for outdoor space in Tukwila that are responsive to the needs of the client, the university, and the environmental context. In particular, they were to involve the client, especially the children, in developing their own visions of the outdoor environment. Programming tasks included identifying and visually documenting potential sites; conducting mapping exercises with children; interviewing school staff, various city representatives, and citizens; generating design criteria for the sites; and discussing preliminary findings with community and university constituents. The outcome of this effort can be viewed under Programmatic Requirements

Design activities took place during the first week of spring quarter in what architects and urban planners refer to as a "charrette" or an intense period of creative production. The term--"en charrette" means "on the cart" in French--originated at the first architecture school in Paris and referred to a last-minute effort to complete assignments. Currently, the term describes any activity that brings citizens and professionals together to develop design alternatives within a compressed time period. While charrettes have a long tradition in the UW Department of Architecture, this charrette expanded to include participation of other disciplines and the client. It involved about 70 students and invited academics and practitioners locally and nationally, and began with about 100 fourth and fifth graders presenting their design proposals. This group worked in four interdisciplinary teams to respond to the programming requirements and the children's ideas. They were charged with producing both "big picture" and "easy win" design proposals. The outcome of this effort can be viewed under Design Proposals.

To gain insights on the degree to which learning goals were met, each of the constituent groups were engaged in an assessment of the project. CEEDS staff conducted an evaluation with the Tukwila children and teachers, and the UW Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR) got feedback from the university students and faculty. The next steps of community building include getting support for implementing some of the design proposals in the coming year. To secure support, the design proposals are being disseminated in a variety of venues, including this one. A summary of possible implementation activities can be viewed under Next Steps of Community Building.