that's about that
so moving right along we we now have
our keynote speaker Dr Lorraine Maxwell
and I want to make sure that she gets
her full 45 minutes so we're going to
adjust times
towards the end of the conference day
Dr Lorraine Maxwell she's an
environmental psychologist and associate
professor emeritus in the Department of
Design and Environmental Analysis at
Cornell University.
Her research focuses on the role of the
physical environment
in children's and adolescence cognitive
development,
well-being, self-identity and behavior.
Her research looks closely at the
physical environment of schools and
early childhood facilities
and its role in student outcomes and
child development.
She's also interested in the role of
neighborhood design and quality and
adolescent development.
So we're very excited to have you here
Dr Maxwell
um so thank you for 45 minutes.
All right thank you i will start my screen share and
hope that all this
works well
okay can all of you see that fully
Joellen am i doing this correctly? (Joellen) So you're
going to hit display settings and
and reverse it because right now we see
your speaker view.
 
okay all right
thank you
okay and thank you thank you everyone
for
attending this conference today and
for attending my keynote. Good morning to
everyone.
I am an environmental psychologist and
so I'm interested in how the physical
environment
affects all aspects of human behavior
and development
and in particular as Joellen says my
research has looked at children.
Now i recognize at this conference that
those of you who are attending are
specifically concerned about pest
management
but pest management is, of course, part of the general
building condition and so i'm going
to talk a little bit about
how important the physical
environment of schools
is in terms of education and health
issues
and the psychological processes related
to learning and
how the building fits into and relates
to those psychological processes.
So we're going to have sort of an
overview
about those issues and then I'll talk
specifically about how
building condition can affect students
perception
of their learning environment and how
that perception might affect their
student outcomes in specifically
academic outcomes. So the work that all
of you are doing
you already know that it's important but
indeed it fits into a larger scheme
about the quality of the physical
environment. 
Some of you may or may not have heard of
Bronfenbrenner,
Yuri Bronfenbrenner was a professor at
Cornell in the College of Human Ecology
which is
my home college. He died a little over
about 10 years ago, maybe 12 years ago
but his work
in terms of child development has
influenced a lot of us who continue to
do work in this area.
Some of you may have heard old theories
about, well, which is more important the
environment for children
or their biology? In other words what
they bring to it.
Is it the environment or the person and
what we like about Bronfenbrenner's
theory
is that he puts that that one is no more
important than the other
but they all contribute to child
development. So he says that development,
that D,
is a function of the person what they
bring to the table, in other words.
What he calls proximal processes which
are the daily activities that
children are involved in
and those activities take place
primarily in the home
and the school, and in fact children may
spend more time
in school, of course, not given COVID-19,
but normally they weren't in school
the context, the context is both the
social
and the physical environment. So while
i'm going to be talking about the
building today the physical school
facility, and all of you are concerned
about that too.
We all know that the teachers and staff
are and parents
and and adults in children's lives we
know that they are important but right
now we're going to concentrate on the
building.
So he says the context is the social and
the physical environment. And then T
stands for time. The children
experiencing third grade and 1970,
1990, 2010, and now 2020, are experiencing of
although third grade and although about
eight years old
are experiencing different things. And so he suggests 
that we take those things into
that we consider those things when we think
about development. But for today
we're going to talk about the things
that schools can control,
which is mostly the proximal processes,
meaning the daily activities that happen
in school, and what we're most concerned with today
the physical context of the school building.
So those are how it relates to
educational outcomes.
And then briefly also address health
outcomes
and how health outcomes can affect
student absenteeism,
which of course may relate to student
educational outcomes
and then the physical environment also
affects teacher absenteeism and
we all recognize this.
First, however, let's look at the
psychological processes that
relate to learning. And i think you'll
begin to see (inaudible) are
related to the physical school building.
Don't forget that I
know that people are important in
these things too, but we're concentrating
on the building right now.
So cognitive fatigue, that process
that process is related to the inability
to maintain
sustained attention. And we'll probably
test ourselves with that
today. So you begin to deteriorate,
your ability to learn,
when you've had to concentrate really
hard
for a very long time. Which is why at
conferences we have breaks.
We even will have one with this
virtual conference where we can step
away from our screens. 
But when we're physically in a place
usually sessions are 45 minutes maybe an hour, hour and a half,
because after that amount of time people
begin to lose the ability
to continuously pay attention. This is, of
course, true for children too.
So, we'll talk about how to build (inaudible) to fatigue and of course
when children are fatigued they stop
paying attention
and learning deteriorates. Attention-
distraction the ability to stay
on task. We always talk about children, 
"pay attention, pay attention"
but how might the building the
physical environment
contribute to their ability not to pay
attention?
what's happening in the building?
Motivation,
the desire to learn, that affects all of
us,
adults and children. Why now children are
told to go to school but once they're
there what will spark their interest and the
more highly motivated they
are and the building can contribute to
motivation, and as we'll see,
the likelihood that they will learn
better (excuse me)
and then emotional affect.
One's attachment to the place.
I will never forget and I will
i've been working in schools in New York
state,
but i will never name districts, but
one focus group I held in a district in
New York state,
a child said to me "if the school looked
better maybe more kids would come to
school all the time"
And that really stuck with
me. It's been a number of years ago when
that child said that to me. That relates to emotional affect
how attached a child
is to their school. I hope that all of us
here have had good memories of our
schools and
how connected we felt to that building
and
to the people in the building.
But okay, so first let's look at how the
physical factors of
physical features of a building are
related to cognitive fatigue. 
Remember fatigue is you've been paying
attention for a long time and you're
just tired now.
So complex environments when there
are many, many colors or
many textures, or if you go into any
elementary school classroom
lots and lots of displays, can detract,
if you will, from children being able
to pay attention and contribute to
cognitive fatigue.
There's just too much to look at. 
There's a phrase of
you know going to the candy store and if
you don't know what to choose
that's what I'm talking about. Again,
I've interviewed children and I've
asked them about
the kinds of displays that are in their
classroom. 
And they will always say when the
display relates to what they're learning,
then, not what it's now February and what
they learned in September, but that helps them.
They can look up
if they're having a math lesson and they
see an example on the board around them
or a project that they did related to
math that helps to reduce cognitive fatigue.
It helps to keep them
involved. So the type and amount of
displays in a classroom, too many colors, too many things going on,
there's just too much to look at
and pay attention to. So those kinds of
things contribute to cognitive fatigue. Indoor air quality,
of course. I'm sure you're all aware if
it's too hot,
if it's too cold, if the air circulation
is poor,
of course that's also related to issues of
COVID-19. But even prior to COVID-19 and after
ventilation is important. Again, if people
feel uncomfortable
then they're less likely to be able
to pay
attention and children are no different.
Lighting can also contribute to
cognitive fatigue. If it's difficult, we're talking about
natural lighting
as well as well as electrical lights.
So the amount of the light
level will help children
pay attention. If it's too bright that
contributes to cognitive fatigue.
And just as well if it's too dark.
Classroom layout also affects
cognitivity. The arrangement of the furniture
and i should say that that arrangement
should support the lessons.
So for example, when you want everybody
to look at
what's in front of them, the teacher the
speaker,
it helps if people are in rows. Right? So
you're all facing forward this is true
in movie theaters, it's true in houses of
worship, it's true in lecture halls. You want everybody to pay attention.
Cluster arrangements of desks
and in any other situation as well
really helps if people are going to
interact with each other.
However, if the arrangement of the
classroom
is not supporting the kind of lesson
that you're having,
so for example, you want everyone to look
at the person in front of the room, but
you've arranged the chairs and the
tables
in a classroom in a way for students to
look at each other
then they're going to be distracted
which relates to attention
and contributes to cognitive fatigue.
However, if the lesson that's happening
where you want children to work together
and you put them in rows
then that just makes it much more
difficult and they're going to start
talking. and that will (inaudible) so the classroom layout definitely
affects cognitive fatigue. So moving
forward now
and I'm hoping that I don't use all
45 minutes for this so that we can have
some time for questions. 
So physical features related to
attention and distraction. I've already touched on
some of those and you can see
how attention and distraction and
cognitive fatigue
are related to each other.
So, features that relate to attention and
distraction, acoustics or noise,
density, crowding, classroom complexity,
which I talked a little bit about,
just now, the layout of the classroom and the
building design itself. So effects of chronic exposure to
noise. When I say chronic exposure to
noise we're talking about,
we're not talking about intermittent
noise every once in a while.
An airplane goes overhead
or train goes by or truck goes by...
We're talking about school environments
where there is
constant noise. We're also
talking about school environments they
may have poor adjacency issues. And so there's a classroom next to the
cafeteria or next to the band practice
room,
and or there's a classroom in a very
noisy corridor.
All of these things can contribute to
children experiencing
chronic noise as opposed to acute noise. And from our research we know that
children's ability to pay attention greatly
decreases when there's chronic noise, especially if
they have a difficult task to do. 
If they have difficulty concentrating...
And for young children, 
they're not able to tune out.
As adults, and if there's some noise
going on, we can
try to put that aside and pay attention
to what we have to do.
Children, if they're chronically exposed
to noise,
haven't learned how to do that. And so
they just tune out everything.
They tune out the noise, but they also
tune out the teacher,
and they may tune out whatever has
happened to the classroom.
So, we know that children exposed to
chronic noise
it has a negative effect on
their ability
to learn to read, especially.
Okay, these aren't necessarily
educational outcomes but obviously
something important. 
We also know that children
chronically exposed to noise
have a decreased tolerance for
frustration.
If you're frustrated you're not going to
learn very well. You just
give up. We have found elevated
blood pressure levels in children
chronically exposed to noise,
which can lead to problems in their
adulthood, increased reports of stress in
children. They feel stressed. If they feel
stressed they're not going to learn well.
And then increased mental and voice
fatigue in teachers.
If they have to constantly keep their
voice up...
I would say that schools have
experimented with
carpeting. But carpeting introduces other
issues related to indoor air quality and
other kinds of things. 
So there's there's a balance of this.
But if teachers are fatigued they're not
teaching as well and, of course, that will
then affect student outcomes. So all of these things
are related.
So what are some sources? And this will
depend on the school district where
you are. Some school districts do not
experience any of these things
in terms of the external sources, but
almost every school district will have
some internal sources that they need to
pay attention to.
The external sources, airport traffic,
that mostly occurs in larger
environments or depending on where your
school is located,
road traffic and train traffic. Now you
may say
well why would you build a school near
an airport? This usually doesn't happen
on purpose. 
Often the flight patterns may change or
the airport may put in a new runway. And all of a sudden nearby schools and
their homes, because if a child
is in elementary school and they're
experiencing chronic noise in the school,
most likely
since elementary schools children live
nearby
they're also experiencing chronic noise
when they're at home.
Internal sources of noise, mechanical
systems...
what noise is that generating in the
classroom?
This low-level kind of noise, and we've all
experienced that.
Lighting can contribute to noise. 
Furniture being moved around,
which would again distract children
and some children are more easily
distracted than others. 
A building designed, by that i mean
adjacencies, 
where do you place the classrooms in the
building? Where do you place the
cafeteria?
i did some work in a child care center
once where they
located the infant sleeping room next to
the cafeteria.
The teachers were then,
the school was then, not able to use the
cafeteria because the noise generated there
interfered with the infants. And so again, building
design affects all of these things. 
Okay another feature related to
attention and distraction
is density and crowding. These are
not necessarily the same thing, but they
are related. Density is an objective
measure, 
how many people in a space? How much
square footage is allotted to each person in that space?
Crowding is a response to the density.  Some people
may feel crowded in
in a specific situation. The same
situation someone else may not feel crowded.
So we don't want to confuse those terms.
We feel crowded when we can't control
our interactions with other people. So if you feel you're constantly being
interrupted because of the number of
other people in the space
that can contribute to cognitive fatigue
or attention overload.
And, of course, density, the objective
measure of that,
will contribute to the number of people
in a space.
But some people may feel more difficulty
controlling their ability to interact
with other people.
We know that crowding and density,
well density i should say right now, is
also related to COVID-19
issues for health reasons, so the
number of people in a space and the
amount of square footage in the space
is really important.
I'm talking today about how children
learn but we know it also has health
issues. 
So school size in terms of density
issues...
The research has shown that smaller
schools tend to promote more pro-social
behaviors.
That's because there's fewer people and
so each person
in that situation may have to take on
more
leadership roles or more
responsibility and so they're more
likely to work together.
You may know that if you're in a very
large organization
and you don't really want to be on the
leadership council you can just sort of
lay back,
and just be a member. However if it's a
very small organization
everybody has to play a very responsible
role. And that's what we're talking about
in terms of school
size. We see fewer acts of violence
per student just because there's fewer
people around.
Academic achievement, now some small
schools,
there are benefits but there's
conflicting evidence in terms of
achievement because
sometimes smaller schools don't have the
budget to provide the kinds of resources
and spaces. So there are some drawbacks
to having very small schools.
Classrooms, in terms of density, we definitely see a negative
effect on learning when
density is high, meaning a large
number of students
or square footage per child is reduced.
It's a negative effect on behavior. 
Boys tend to be more negatively affected
in crowded classrooms in terms of
behavior,
and this will draw the teachers
attention more to
reining in their behavior and thereby
neglecting the girls in the classroom.
Some research has shown that and so
girls then, while they may not be
as demonstrating their discomfort
with the
density in the classroom they are also
suffering
higher levels of distraction, just
more people around, so there's more
things to pay attention to
which contributes to cognitive fatigue.
And less pro-social behavior.
 This is not written in stone but these
are some of the things that can happen
in crowded classrooms, or high-density
classrooms.
So, just again to reiterate this point
when i'm talking about class
size i'm talking about group size - the
number of people in a space -
I have these stars here because this is
also now related to COVID-19, 
but we see increased academic
achievement for class sizes
which less than 17 children. This is in
elementary school. 
So COVID-19 and the class sizes that we
have to maintain now may shed some additional
light on these issues. What it means, however,
is that more classrooms have to be built
and so that's another whole issue.
And when i say class size square footage
per child
is a different issue. You can have
15 children in a classroom and each
child has 20 square feet per child
or you could have 15 children in a
classroom and every child only has 10
square feet per child. So you have the
same number of children
but you have a different square footage.
Okay, let's move to motivation. How does
the physical features of a
school relate to motivation? That
child I told you about at the beginning
where that child talked about
if the school looked better more people
would come to school. So he had a very good understanding of
how the physical environment is contributing
to motivating students to want to be
there.
Some specific things we can look at is
control -
their ability to manipulate the
environment. Do children
feel, and teachers as well, can teachers
actually arrange their classroom to do
the kinds of things they want to do? 
Can they make materials available so the
children can get them themselves? 
As opposed to always having to hand
things out, because that
then children have some sense of
their participation
in the classroom so they're more highly
motivated to participate.
Access issues is not just ADA but because of course all schools have to
pay very close attention to those issues, 
but i'm also talking about adjacency
issues. How close are the - and some of this is
defined by code - but how close are the
restrooms to
where students need to have them?  Talking about
also the height of door handles, the heaviness of a door,
do children feel comfortable being in a
space? And you'll see this later the more
comfortable children feel in a space
the more highly motivated they are that
this is my space. And especially for younger children
and but also in high school, does the physical facility allow them
the opportunity to explore
different kinds of materials?
Is the classroom large enough to do these kinds of things?
I have a very fond memory of my own
elementary school education.
We were building a, we had walked around our neighborhood,
and then we were going to create a scale
model of our neighborhood, so we were
learning about street patterns
and the kinds of stores and about the
city. And then and so we had a large enough
classroom to actually create
a scale model of a particular
neighborhood around our school and i
still remember
that in shop the things that i built to
contribute to that.
So again, I must have been obviously
highly motivated to participate and to
still remember that as an adult. Emotional affect is related
to motivation, obviously.
So how good do we feel about being in
school?
I'm sad to say that one of the schools that I was
conducting research in, 
I was conducting a focus group
with new schools
trying to get their understanding of how
the physical environment was affecting
them.
And we were in the teacher's lounge
conducting this focus group after school
and while we were talking a mouse ran
through the space.
Okay, so this might relate to to some of
what you are concerned with
the girls jumped up on their desk. I and
my assistant, we
remained relatively calm. If it had been
a rat,
i would have been out the door but it
was a mouse,
and the boys were sort of freaked out,
too.
and I said does this the mouse seeing
us
you know ran back at its hole but i
asked the students
had this ever happened before? And they
said it happens
all the time. Even in the cafeteria, so
this is building maintenance issues.
Children cannot possibly feel good
about being in a place where those kinds
of things happen a lot. So when i'm talking about
emotional affect
i'm talking about the academic climate.
Do children respect each other? Do
teachers respect students, vice versa?
Do they feel as if the academic climate
is encouraging them
always to go to the next level? And there are physical features that can
relate to this academic climate.
Building maintenance being one of them. 
How well
is the building maintained? Do kids feel
good?
Do teachers feel good about being in
that school building?
Also, research has shown that space for
personalization can
affect how attached a child feels to the
school,
and to the academic climate. 
Again, we looked at a study in an
elementary school where
several classrooms only had commercial
things up on the boards. Well all the
classrooms had that at the beginning
then after a certain time half of the
classrooms were given
the opportunity to personalize the space
with things that the children wanted to
put up.
And we've at the other classrooms kept
the commercial materials
and we found that at the end of that
study that the children, where there was
more personalization,
had higher scores on self-esteem.
So this can also then obviously
contribute to their emotional affect and
hopefully to better academic outcomes.
So i could stop here briefly and ask
there are their questions Joellen, or
should i continue and then go
later? Questions later...
(Joellen) I would keep going at this point
nothing has shown up
in the chat. (Dr Maxwell) Okay, okay fine okay, so physical features of the school
building related to student and teacher
health outcomes.
Obviously, the heating, ventilation,
air conditioning-cooling system, the HVAC
system is going to contribute to
health outcomes.
In particular, we know now ventilation
issues
are related to COVID-19 but these
issues are always
important. So not only does ventilation
and heating and cooling relate to
those academic outcomes that I talked
about but they contribute to health
outcomes. Teachers, staff, students who may have
asthma or different things, obviously pest
management issues are related to
asthma in terms of controlling any
asthma triggers. But the HVAC system is also important.
Maintenance, again that's what many of
you are concerned with, in maintaining a
clean environment and also
for the student's sake a visually
clean space.
That the bathrooms are clean. That the corridors are clean. That the
classroom is clean. That they don't see
watermarks in the ceiling. 
So these are the kinds of things that
students will notice, you know, and they pay attention to these things.
But it also contributes, obviously,
to health outcomes, class size and
crowding can contribute to health
outcomes.
Especially now we're talking about that
and acoustics will contribute to health
outcomes
in terms of hearing loss,
potentially, so...
Okay, so, how does building condition
relate to student perception
and therefore student outcomes?
So, and i will identify this school
district...
New York City. I looked at
all of the middle schools in New York
City to look at how school building quality
might be related to academic
achievement.
Now we already know in my field that
school building quality
is affecting academic outcomes. That
the better
the school building itself
we tend to see higher achievement
scores
and better maintained and better
designed school buildings, so the work
that all of you are doing
is really very critical. But we have also
found that school building quality seems
to be related to student
attendance. Why might that be?
Well there might be health issues. There
might be motivation
issues. And this was across,
it wasn't just occurring in low
income areas,
but across income groups. So,
my question was why would school
building quality - I know it's affecting attendance - and if
children aren't attending then
outcomes are obviously going to be
affected. Why is that happening?  I'm trying to I'm
thinking why would school building
quality be related to
attendance and therefore achievement? So I decided to look at the social climate
of... the academic climate. 
Are students always encouraged to go to
the next level?
Are they are they respecting, are they
encouraged to respect each other? Are
they encouraged
to participate in the school? Do teachers
feel that everyone respects? So that's
the academic climate. So I decided to look at how school
building quality, the physical building,
is related to the academic climate or
the social climate. If the social climate is poor then
attendance may go down
and if attendance goes down then
achievement will go down. And so that's
what i did.
So, we know that this happens in
elementary school,
that school building quality predicted
academic performance and student
lateness. Student perception of the building
quality also predicted academic performance so,
and i should tell you that in these
studies student perception of building
quality merit, we also asked the building
superintendents, with the same measures to rate their
school building quality. And the schools where the students
thought the building quality was
poor were the same buildings
that the adults, the building
superintendents, thought the building
quality was poor. So it wasn't just student perception.
They were seeing the building
for what it is. Perceived classroom
quality was also a good predictor
of scholastic competency and children's
self-worth. Again, I've just talked about this, that
school building quality predicts
academic
performance. Perception of school
building quality predicts
academic performance. So the quality
really is
important and students are seeing the
building for what it is.
So in New York City I looked at
all the middle schools so this was
236 middle schools in New York City. And what i wanted to see was
how was building quality, that's building
two,
related to students perception of the
academic
and social climate. And how did that
relate to attendance,
which and then how did that affect test
scores. Now you also see
free lunch there and Per B_H
those refer to the number of
children in a particular school
receiving free and reduced price
meals. That gives me an indication of
the income level of parents, children in
that school and the percentage of black and hispanic
students in this particular school building.
We know that those two factors
low income issues and percentage of
minority students
is related to attendance and we also
know it's related to test scores. However,
what i wanted to see was how were those
things,
how was building quality also related to
those things?
Building quality was assessed
not by me but by
engineers and architects who do a
regular
evaluation, not those employed by the
school district,
but outside contractors and these are
the kinds of things
that they rate.
And then the learning quality survey
which is what New York City
gives to all of its students in middle
school
high school their parents and the
teachers. They all rate
their school building on these
issues so academic expectations - are
there high expectations?
Communications? How well do people
communicate with each other in the
building?
Engagement, how engaged are teachers,
students and parents?
Safety issues that especially related to
maintenance of the building and respect.
Do all the players in the school environment
respect each other? So every school
building in New York City
is, all the students and
teachers
have a very high rate of return
in giving this survey back every year
parents it will depend
so i looked at how students perception
of their
social learning environment is shaped by
the physical quality of their building. And what I found was that
in the buildings that had poor -
based on that rating scale that I showed
you of all those factors that engineers
and architects rate a school building -
so i had a score for every school
building.
And the schools that scored lower on
building quality
also scored lower on that building
quality,
that environmental quality, that social
climate,
also scored lower. By the way the
schools
that had a higher percentage of
low-income families
or minority families,  they did not
necessarily perceive their school
environment as poor except when the billing quality
was poor. So what we found was, well, I'll back up a
second, we found was that while demographic
factors such as
income, families and minority status of
the students,
contributed to student outcomes that the
physical environment
contributes a distinct and specific
contribution to
student outcomes. But in spite of,
and unfortunately we found that there
were more
poor quality buildings in neighborhoods
with low-income students, and
a higher percentage of minority students,
so we have a sort of a social justice
issue here, but when building quality was high
and the few instances that we found then
those students also had
a better perception of their academic
climate. Their attendance was better
and then their student outcomes were
better.
So, in conclusion, yes indeed i know all of you know this,
but i hope that this has helped to
put in context the larger issue of
school building quality, and how the physical environment matters
to the children, especially, but obviously
also to the teachers as well, Thank you.
(Joellen) Thank you very much, Lorraine. I really
appreciate that you make an
incredibly compelling case for how the
building quality really does
impact students and those academic
outcomes.
i'm curious if you have seen
any successful strategies that
you've made this case, people get it, and
now they want to improve their
school building quality. Do you have
any recommendations or stories that you
can tell us? 
(Dr. Maxwell) Ah, okay, yeah sometimes
by the way the attendees at this
conference
don't know that I've also, when I
first came to Cornell, I worked with
cooperative extension and
went out to various counties working
primarily with early childhood teachers.
so,
and I've given workshops related to
their environments
and a little bit also with elementary
schools.
So I suppose I've worked at the level
of the teachers in the classroom,
I've talked with them about things like
the complexity of the classroom.
Telling them what students have told
me that when the displays relate to what
they're learning, oddly enough, the teachers sometimes will
say but my principle says that when parents
come they want to see
lots of stuff on the walls. But then
we go and and, but then I remember
specifically one kindergarten teacher,
she had so much, so much, so many things ,all
and she just - the kids were running all
over the place - and
I suggested that she reduce the number
of toys in the space.
That she reduced the number of cartoon
characters on the walls and things.
And and only hang up children's
artwork
and a few other perhaps displays. And
when I came back a few months later she
said it worked. That things were calmer in the classroom.
And that she had arranged the space such
that children didn't bump
into each other all the time, so that's a
density issue, a crowding issue, so I have worked
with classroom teachers on things they can do in their
classroom. And that school that I told you about
where we saw the mouse come into the teacher's lounge
I related that to a teacher after I
finished with my focus group
and they said that that had been a
persistent problem,
of dealing with pests in their
school.
And they felt that it was contributing
to
the academic climate in their school
and that it was an ongoing issue so
the things that you folks are doing is
you know
obviously you already know it's
important but i've been looking at it
from a slightly different way and
and it really is important and teachers
feel very frustrated. They say it's not our job to do this.
But it's contributing to how they feel
about coming to do their job every day.
And about how students feel in terms
of coming to school every day.
Not sure if that answered your question
Joellen but
(Joellen) Well that that certainly does help so
and what i think i heard you say is that
you've worked on a classroom by
classroom basis
but not an entire school building.
(Dr. Maxwell) Right, right. (Joellen) Here that even when you just
hit one small space we can really make a
difference.
(Dr. Maxwell) Yes, yes, yes. And I think it's been especially helpful
for the teachers that I've engaged with
because they know that the curriculum
is important. They know that what they do is important but tying
that physical environment to
these specific things of attention,
it's not just them yelling pay attention it's the
physical environment
that is contributing to whether or not
children are paying attention. And and also students
beginning to understand that it's not
necessarily their fault
if they can't hear.
That it's something happening in the
physical environment and so if you feel
that I'm doing everything I can it must
be me.
Whereas, if you begin to to understand
that
there are other factors this also
relates to how well you can learn.
So this is Claire. That's so wonderful to
hear we
organizationally Healthy Schools Network
endorsed the New York State
Governor's plan put together by the
Department of Health and the Education
Department that all public and private
schools have to have
written policies, you know written
policies and plans on a whole variety of
things. It's as close as you can get to a,
what we had originally called for in the
spring and then in July in a big
national report for schools to have infection prevention
and control plans. They're not required
to have these things.
In the middle of a pandemic is the wrong
time to figure out you don't have to
control infections in a school and the
wrong time to figure out you don't have
a public health system for kids. (Dr Maxwell) Yeah i'm i'm actually very surprised.
(Joellen) We're going to move on but we can definitely continue this
(Claire) We'll definitely continue
(Dr. Maxwell) I saw a question in the chat Joellen?  I'm sorry..
I saw a question in the chat: "Have I done
this type of presentation to
facility?" I have done this presentation in New York State
to school board, the school boards association. I belong
to a national organization of school facilities people
and they have a New York State chapter.
I've given this kind of presentation
several times to that group both in New
York State and
their national conferences.
I haven't, and of course I've published
on this but,
I haven't given this particular
presentation
in a couple of years in New York State,
this is my first time in a in a few
years okay.
(Claire) What facility group is that?
(Dr. Maxwell) It was called the Council of
Educational Facility Planners
International. Yeah yeah now it's the
Association for Learning Environments.
Yes I was their regional president
one year so I've been involved with them.
(Claire) Oh that's great. We do have to reconnect after this!
(Dr Maxwell)Yes yes Claire good to see you!
