This Berlin school is a (learning) island

From Hildburg Bruns

The first so-called compartment school (department school) was officially opened on Wednesday, the last day of school, on Karower Chaussee in the north of Pankow. Long, dark corridors – that’s old school from now on!

Now hip: four learning houses, each with six classes and breakout rooms, cozy quiet zones with loungers in orange. Each learning house has something extra at the bottom or top – auditorium/canteen or music forum/teaching kitchen or art forum/natural sciences or library/roof terrace.

The children come to their area through an airlock with a shoe-changing zone, from there to a forum with seating, a play area, etc. – the break area. The classrooms with modern Smartboards lead off from here. The teacher has everything in view through panes – for example, if a child needs a break by himself.

Also new in the concept: There is no longer THE teacher’s room, but near each class there is a “team communication area” with four computer workstations, a copier, and a kitchenette.

Everything seems spacious: every elementary school student has the equivalent of 7.4 instead of the previous 5.8 square meters of space. Because this new building is a third larger than the previous standard and also has a ventilation system. So what costs: 57 million euros.

Nine of this 4-stream elementary school type will be built in Berlin, plus ten as a 3-stream variant on smaller lots.

The development of this future school took five years. The then Education Senator Sandra Scheeres (53, SPD) had looked around in Hamburg and Munich. And now experts are coming to Berlin for school sightseeing – especially from Graz and Amsterdam.

At the opening, the new education senator Katharina Günther-Wünsch (40, CDU) praised the bright atmosphere due to the large windows – and the connection to a new sports hall: “It is also available to the neighborhood and enables club sports to be broadened. “