Function, Form, and Peck's Campaign for the Future

From Peck News, Spring 2018:

THE ENGLISH WRITER AND GEOGRAPHER NICHOLAS CRANE once declared that “maps codify the miracle of existence,” helping us to make sense of the wild and wondrous world that surrounds and shapes our daily lives. In the same way, a master plan might be said to codify the existence of a school: tracing the perimeter of the grounds, charting the position of the buildings, pinpointing labs and classrooms and studios—but also revealing something key about how and why things happen, quite apart from where.

At The Peck School, we have been poring over our own master plan in preparation for our Peck Promise campaign—charting every foot of space on our grounds, reimagining the layouts of our classrooms, and even reshaping some longstanding structures and sketching out new ones. However, long before we began rethinking The Peck School’s physical footprint, our leadership team mapped the curricular and cultural shape of things to come. In 2015, we forged a strategic plan to outline how Peck will facilitate continued mastery of timeless academic skill sets; build upon our strengths in hands-on, problem-solving, design-thinking projects; and instill the intellectual and emotional dexterity our graduates need in a rapidly-changing world.

Only then, after our work on the strategic plan left us certain of our programmatic aspirations, did we turn to the task of assessing our physical capacities in the master planning process.

The Peck Promise: The Campaign for Excellence Elevated seeks to fund crucial capital improvements to our campus. However, the driving purpose of this campaign is to sustain a continually enriched, ever-evolving, educational and community experience for our students. It is a commitment that predates our current campaign, lives in our classrooms now, and promises to remain at the heart of our efforts for generations to come.

The Shifting Shape of Learning at Peck

Our 2015 Strategic Plan called for sustained support for innovative teaching and learning. One year later, our campus master plan responded to this pivotal directive by planning spaces that empower complex problem-solving, house design technology and tools, and facilitate cross-curricular connections.

With the help of early donors, Peck has completed some vital instructional facilities, including our new Robotics Lab and the Idea & Design Lab. By mid-2019, we will also complete a STEAM wing to co-locate math classrooms and new science labs next to the art studios and Robotics Lab. Yet, more important than the spaces themselves are the teaching and learning mindsets they are designed to incubate. New facilities empower Peck to do what it already does well even better: to enable our students to think, question, create, and deconstruct across the curriculum and in all areas of study.

Sustaining a Culture of Great Teaching

The Peck School is defined by a culture of teaching excellence and instructional innovation. From the wide-ranging intellectual curiosity instilled by an inspiring Kindergarten teacher to a laser-focused fascination with ancient history provoked in an Upper School language class, the Peck experience turns on masterful teaching in every classroom.

The strategic plan recognizes this, and, in turn, The Peck Promise Campaign seeks to renovate and reimagine the instructional spaces necessary for teachers to evolve their pedagogical ideas. As Bruce Schwartz, director of Peck’s Idea & Design Lab, sees it, these new classrooms and labs are concrete manifestations of the school’s commitment to fresh methods of teaching and learning. “These facilities act as hubs that extend spokes into every aspect of the Peck curriculum and other learning spaces,” he explains. “Guided by the goals of our strategic plan, we are creating environments that allow faculty members to teach the way they aspire to teach.”

Holding space for transformative relationships

Peck educators eagerly embrace every new opportunity to learn about learning itself—and, in particular, they think critically and carefully about how to ensure evolving facilities support enduring goals.

From its earliest days, Peck has prized the authentic, lasting relationships the school facilitates between students and educators, among classmates and schoolmates, and with the community at large. Fittingly, the strategic plan prioritizes collaboration and community spirit. And as a result, The Peck Promise Campaign seeks to support the creation of spaces that harbor longstanding traditions of fellowship.

In particular, the construction of The Peck Commons lies at the heart of both our campus and our commitment to all members of this inclusive, involved school family. This is the largest and most ambitious project of The Peck Promise Campaign, a much-needed update that solves several logistical difficulties efficiently and economically. A new dining facility will enable us to enhance meal service while safeguarding our treasured tradition of family-style dining. A new multipurpose room will, at last, create a space large enough to accommodate the whole of the Peck community at once, allowing us to gather for performances and milestones. And when completed, our music classrooms and outdoor amphitheater will function as centers of artistic expression and creative endeavor— while our InDeCoRe Center nurtures the character development and service learning work that lies at the core of a Peck experience.

The Peck Commons

The Peck Commons Dining Hall

The physical improvements made possible by The Peck Promise Campaign carve out niches in which we will nurture these relationships and preserve these connections for decades to come.

IN THE END, the success of The Peck Promise Campaign might be most easily gauged by the changes it has brought to our campus map— quantified in terms of the number of square feet added, buildings raised, or rooms renovated. But the real measure of our success will register in the learning experiences of our students and the lifelong successes of our alumni. While the form of our school will indeed be changed in exciting ways, our planning ensures that it will take shape around Peck’s timeless function—as a center of integrated learning, inspired teaching, and transformative community.