On-Brand Spaces
Explore Westminster School District's professional development center, where core values and architectural design overlap.
On-Brand Spaces
Where your core values and architecture overlap
Every morning, the California sun shines through the glass doors of the professional development center at Westminster School District (WSD). Interestingly, though, the doors and windows are sheathed in a dark blue material that blocks out most of the light. Cut from the film in artful lettering are the district’s core values: “ignite,” “connect,” “create,” “trust,” “elevate” and “model.” Light shines through the cut-outs, casting the words onto the floor, walls and ceiling.
As the day progresses and the sun moves, so too do the district’s values move through the space—but that’s not the only way they’re at play in the room. That’s because when it came to redesigning their professional development center, WSD didn’t just want the building to be on brand; they wanted the building to be a physical manifestation of their brand—or, their values.
Gerardo Martinez, WSD’s executive director of educational technology, was uniquely positioned to bring this goal to fruition. In addition to his background in education leadership, Martinez also has professional experience as an architect—and he believes branding a space goes far beyond painting a logo on the wall. “Branding is the visible reality of what our values mean,” he explains. “How do we ignite people? How do we connect people through collaboration? I wanted to consider all our values as I built this space. How can they have meaning here beyond just a plaque on the wall?”
What does this look like?
With the district’s colors, logo, tagline and mission displayed across its walls, Westminster’s PD center is on brand in all the expected ways—but the brand’s presence in the space also goes deeper than that. For Martinez, building an on-brand space meant cultivating an environment that truly embodied the district’s core values.
Before the center’s renovation, the space was characterized by seclusion. “There were offices inside of offices,” Martinez says. “There were no windows. It was crazy.” For years, the space had operated as a kind of glorified storage facility with outdated furniture and harsh linoleum floors. It certainly wasn’t a space that ignited creativity, encouraged connection or fostered mutual trust.
With the redesign, WSD wanted to change all that. It was important for the space itself to build trust through transparency—“hence the glass conference rooms,” Martinez says. The center’s three glass-walled breakout rooms are a reflection of the space’s move from isolation toward the district’s values of connection and trust. “Now we’re able to literally work transparently with one another,” he explains.
But the space reflects the district’s values in other ways, too. Take, for example, that last value: “model.” According to Martinez, the PD center must first and foremost be a positive model of strong educational practices. “But what does good learning look like?” Martinez asks. “Do we want rows? Do we want to be the sage on the stage? No, we want a collaborative learning environment.” So, to model collaborative learning, the space is replete with eight-foot-tall whiteboards, as well as a variety of seating options and tables that can be easily moved to accommodate different arrangements. “You should be able to tell exactly how learning works here just by seeing the physical space,” says Martinez.
The PD center’s flexible spaces also encourage people to “connect” in order to “ignite” new ideas. By providing inherently collaborative spaces, “we can get people to stand up and talk instead of just being heads around a table,” Martinez says. “We can get them to participate, to connect, to put their ideas on whiteboards and make their learning visible.”
Martinez talks through this and more as he moves around the room, offering a virtual tour and explaining the reasoning for every decision. “The philosophy here is that there’s no front of the room,” he says, gesturing to the interactive display monitors hanging on each wall. These monitors can be easily programmed to act in unison or as independent displays to accommodate both small- and whole-group activities. The room is also wired with Topcat instructional audio speakers, making it easy for everyone to hear regardless of where the facilitator stands. “It’s about removing barriers to differentiate learning,” Martinez explains.
Not only is improved accessibility crucial to modeling good instruction—it’s also key to several of the district’s other values, like trusting, elevating and creating. After all, inclusive environments foster feelings of trust and belonging. And the more we feel like we belong, the more likely we are to take risks and get creative.
And of course, to encourage connection and elevate their staff members, WSD had to make their PD center a place employees actually wanted to spend time. To make the space more warm and inviting, they added carpet, wood tones and a kitchenette. “I would connect it back to trust again,” Martinez says. “We want people to feel comfortable. We don’t want our employees to feel like they’re coming here to be told what to do. This is their space, too. We want them to trust that it’s safe to contribute.”
How did they do it?
While designing a professional learning space in accordance with your district’s values may sound great in theory, it’s also quite the undertaking. So how did the WSD team do it? By remaining goal-oriented and fiscally responsible.
Martinez went into the redesign knowing he wanted to do more than just create a cool space. Because even though, as Martinez tells us, innovation appears over and over in the district’s strategic plan, innovation for innovation’s sake totally misses the mark. “Let’s talk about that word—‘innovation,’” Martinez says. “What does it really mean?”
To answer that question, Martinez cites IDEO, a design firm in San Francisco that has measured innovation across 100 companies. In their research, they found that the companies with the highest levels of innovation had a few things in common, including a shared vision and flexible workspaces. Nowhere in IDEO’s research did they find that innovation is rooted in top-dollar tech. That’s why WSD’s goal for their PD space was never to create something high-tech and flashy. Their goal was to focus on their district’s core values in order to create a flexible space, one that can accommodate all kinds of learning needs and experiences. In other words, their goal was to be truly innovative rather than overly extravagant.
That said, Martinez has worked on his fair share of extravagant projects. “I’ve done 20-foot interactive walls,” he says. “I’ve built secret tunnels so kids can go through a bookcase from one classroom to another. But my caution to others is always: What problem does that solve? We often go to the product before the why, and if you don’t understand the problem you’re solving, a shiny project is never going to help.” So before you begin making any decisions about your educational spaces, ask yourself first: What are your goals, and what will this space do to help you meet them? Are you creating a space that looks innovative or one that will actually lead to innovation?
On the fiscal front, Martinez is careful to note that the district did as much as they could to keep costs low. The paint and carpet were left over from past projects, and they prioritized adaptive furniture over fancy furniture—choosing chairs with wheels over higher-dollar soft seating options like beanbags (not to say that they won’t add beanbags in the future).
However, Martinez says that if you’re starting with your budget, you’re getting ahead of yourself. “When you think about innovation, you of course have to balance it with budget—but aim high first. Ideate. That’s the best part, inviting people to come up with ideas,” Martinez tells us. “Only once you get all their ideas on the board should you look at your budget. Then, you can ask: How close can we get to our vision?”
How’s it going?
Recently, WSD put their professional development center to the test for the first time. Would it live up to the values it had been founded on? Would it ignite connection and creativity? Foster trust? Elevate ideas and model good instruction? It would seem the answer is yes.
WSD took it upon themselves to invite every other district in Orange County to attend an AI-focused professional learning session at its new PD center. “That way we could learn from each other,” Martinez says. Of the 28 districts invited, representatives of 22 showed up—a total of 64 attendees utilizing the district’s PD space. Martinez himself gave a presentation on WSD’s journey with AI as an elementary school district, while districts with older students shared their perspectives on what age-appropriate use might look like. “It was pretty cool,” Martinez tells us. “Right away, people knew exactly what to do when we told them to break into groups, to spread themselves out and display their thinking. Just by looking at the space, everyone knew how to organize themselves. It was a lot of fun to watch.”
And while the event was a huge success, the district’s plans for the space extend far beyond traditional PD. “When we designed this space, we considered everything from professional learning to celebrations,” Martinez says. In fact, the district also recently hosted a baby shower at the PD center. After all, if one of the district’s core values is “elevate,” how better to elevate the staff than to celebrate them?
“We say in our vision that we want to provide exceptional and innovative experiences, where all learners thrive,” Martinez says. “To do that, our core values must be apparent and visible, not only physically and graphically—but in action.”