Share & Share Alike

The school of nearly 600 students consists of four sections of kindergarten through fifth grade with two Early Childhood classrooms. Teachers favored a small learning community layout with shared resource and storage rooms between each pair of classrooms. This provides storage areas for kits and other teaching aids, and a shared resource room for tutoring, testing, and small group activities. The resource rooms are located on the perimeter to receive daylight and views. The glass that separates them from the main classroom permits teacher supervision and allows light to penetrate this portion of the classroom. Each classroom has one tack wall at one end with marker boards and a SMART Board™ at the opposite end. Casework runs along the corridor wall and built-in bookshelves with a window seat along the exterior wall. Operable windows and a unit ventilator allow the teachers to fine tune the temperature in their rooms. The kindergarten and early childhood classrooms are located near the office and share an indoor activity area which leads out to their fenced-in playground with appropriately sized play structures. The remaining classrooms are clustered in wings, with no more than two grades in each, and doors that allow them to be shut off from the rest of the school.

The media center has a series of activity spaces including a teaching space with a SMART Board™ and a circular story area, large enough to seat an entire grade and indirectly lit by curved glass block walls. The computer lab is separated from the media center by a glass wall and there is also a closed circuit TV studio. A huge curved glass wall looks out into the main corridor with its colorful mural depicting the history of the city of Hudson and admits light from the clerestory windows.