“What are you going to do about those windows?”: Making a transparent schoolhouse
When we decided to turn a century mercantile into a one-room schoolhouse, we heard this question a lot: What are you going to do about those windows? The storefront windows are large, facing the street. They were one of the features that allowed us to see the potential of this space: a bright classroom, filled with plants and nestled into a busy neighborhood. However, many people saw these windows as a potential issue. Traffic or other neighborhood happenings might distract the children, people could see into the school from the street. To be fair, most early years spaces in our area keep their windows covered for these reasons and (probably) many others.
We weren’t concerned about distractions or privacy issues — we chose this neighborhood to be a part of it, not apart from it. But the repeated concerns and questions about the windows did make us think: how might a storefront be more than a great source of lighting or a lovely space to put plants? We wanted the windows to be additive spaces that had potential to build community and curriculum in a way that a more traditional school building couldn’t.
We now think about our window displays as a defining feature of a “transparent schoolhouse” — a shared visual space that materializes what it’s like to be a child (and a teacher) at Watershed Community School and, more broadly, makes child/hoods more visible in West Hill/Highland Square. Working with the notion of transparency as both a metaphor for educational practice and a physical reality of the glass, the storefront windows have emerged as a space for public art, curricular engagement, and pedagogical documentation. Our intention is to use the windows as a way to connect to the community and to create a certain kind of “school” experience — one that is interesting and beautiful, aligned with our values, and entangled with the dynamic inquiries and interests of the children.
