Stevenson Elementary

Stevenson is a study of how to celebrate community and cultural diversity exploring indoor and outdoor learning to expire students to learn.

The Bellevue School District has been recognized for many years as a district that strives for educational excellence and preparing their students for college and life. Throughout the years the City of Bellevue where it is located, has experience a major demographics shift. Today the City of Bellevue is culturally diverse representing more than 30 languages and has enriched the City of Bellevue.

This rich diversity has created a culture to be proud, and yet one can observe, it has also created real challenges in education and social equity.

Language and Culture at Stevenson its manifests by the daily effort of teachers and specialists provide for every student with English as a Second Language to navigate thru the basic concepts of an elementary education.

To meet these challenges, we heard that the sense of Community needed to be preserved and embraced to help every district’s staff, teachers, and parents to expire every student’s education. The school needed to have a center a “Heart.”

To understand the context of this community, the team engaged on a series of collaborative inclusive conversations where everyone contribute to the result of how the building was created.

The building needed to have the standard learning environment to accommodate these unique teaching and learning methodologies around ELSC context.

The Heart and core of the building is adaptable and flexible to enhance learning and provide another unique connection to the Community.

Family and students’ needs at Stevenson are met with a simple space named: Family Connections, located at its heart, and run by a partnership between the city and the school district to provide families and students with basic necessities of life. Food, Clothing, and books as well as a simple toilet room to prepare students in need to go to school every day.

The building incorporates state of the art energy systems to follow the Bellevue School District Vision in sustainability.

Designing for these challenges and needs required the building needed to have a presence in the context to enhance its role as a community building.

The building also required a link between Community and Education.

The building embraces these two ideas with a “Bridge to Knowledge” manifested physically in a way that hopefully will Expire to Achieve the Dreams of every student that will walk throughout time the hallways of Stevenson Elementary School.

Celebrating Diversity, Building Community, Creating Space for Cultural Connection