Engaging Hearts & Minds: Inspiring Student Ownership and Agency in Classrooms

By Susan Miller and Tracy Murch

It’s rare in a career to be a part of designing a dream school from the ground up. Rarer still for students to be a part of the process.

At Seven Hills, we’re in the midst of planning a brand-new Lower School building. Over the last six months, students, teachers, administrators and parents have participated in visioning meetings; constructed 3D models of classrooms and discussed the latest in classroom design with architects. Teachers have toured more than 10 peer schools across seven states.

We are, somehow, both exhausted and energized. 

From all this research and visioning, the central principles we’ve found to be true is that students want and need flexibility and ownership over their space. For so long, students were kept in rectangles and lines — rectangular desks in straight lines in rectangular classrooms, in rectangular buildings created with no student input. These days are long gone.

As educators today, we know that one of the best gifts we can give our children is a blank canvas — a chance to use their imagination, explore and make something truly their own. Children need to feel a sense of agency in their daily lives to varying degrees based on age appropriateness. 

If you walk into any one of our early childhood classrooms now, you’ll see different centers or zones arranged throughout the rooms. Centers within a classroom are important in early childhood learning, because they allow students to work on a variety of activities simultaneously. Through explicit instruction from their teachers, the youngest students know they are builders in the block center, authors in the writing center, and artists in the drawing center.

As students get older, they seek more independence. They want various spaces, nooks for quiet reading, and tables to do collaborative work with or without the teacher. In our design sessions with students and architects, their thoughtful discussions about access to nature, lighting and flexible seating surprised us. Elementary school students came to the same conclusions as our veteran teachers with decades of experience in education and child development.

During our visits to peer elementary schools, we saw creative uses of space that both empowered the students and guided their educational journey. There were removable walls, a mixture of bright and colorful and muted and natural tones in classrooms, and a dedication to outdoor education and free play, regardless of the weather.

Outdoor education reminds us that the classroom is not confined to four walls. There’s no greater environment to encourage creativity, responsibility and ownership. Research from the American Psychological Association has shown that children spending time in nature improves mental health and emotional well-being and has various cognitive benefits. The pace of our lives today rarely allows for unstructured play, but given the chance, children can thrive in nature. Children just need to be encouraged to go and dig in the dirt, build a structure with sticks, play in a puddle or go for a hike.

Playing outside in nature also begins to teach kids about the stewardship of the Earth. It feels more important to children if they have spent more time in it. They start to understand that people live in the natural world and that it is a space, just like their classrooms. 

A brilliantly designed classroom, indoors or out, should feel like it belongs to students and teachers. It should encourage exploration, foster respect and invite collaboration. Our goal is clear: to create spaces that empower students to take ownership of their learning and a sense of shared responsibility for the world around them.

If we do this right, our students won’t just inhabit their new school — they’ll help shape it.

Susan Miller is the head of the Seven Hills Lotspeich Lower School, and Tracy Murch is head of the Seven Hills Doherty Lower School.