From navigating a worldwide pandemic to forging new ways of learning, the Samohi Class of 2024 has been through it all, staying resilient through its four years.
Through it all, the places that students congregated were constantly shifting as well, as facility changes and improvements at Samohi were prevalent for the senior class. The Samohi campus added a new complex, the Discovery Building, in the fall of 2021, while construction on the upcoming Exploration Building and Gold Gym was an ongoing part of Samohi life.
The senior class started its Samohi career virtually in August 2020 due to the lingering COVID-19 pandemic, which made site work particularly impactful for students. Before reopening partially in April 2021, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Chief Operations Officer Carey Upton and his team had to move “every desk in the district” three times over, not agreeing on what six feet of student separation meant. Though some students chose to stay home to end off 2020-21, campus facilities were pivotal to those that returned.
“From the day we closed school, we began working diligently to get school back open,” Upton said. “It took more than a year, and we kept chasing and trying to understand what it would take to get back open. While we were doing that, the kids (and teachers) were learning a completely new way to learn, the whole distance learning was a real challenge for everyone socially.”
Incoming sophomores were welcomed to a fully-open Samohi in fall of 2021, and were also brought into the Discovery Building for the first time. The open-plan structure boasts 28 classrooms, 288 parking spaces, an Olympic-size pool, an indoor-outdoor cafeteria and rooftop classrooms. Since its opening, the building has been selected for several awards, including a leadership award from Green California Schools Summit in 2021.
The building was an interesting case for Upton and his team, since teachers typically need preparation time for a building that changes “the whole education plan” of the campus. However, the pandemic stripped away the prep, creating an awkward transition period.
“We sort of threw (everyone) in on the deep end to figure it out … over the next couple of months, you started seeing some teachers and some students figuring it out … by about the time we got to winter break (and) came back in January, what you started to see was (students) and all the teachers embracing how the building works,” Upton said.
The larger classroom sizes in the building shifted classroom settings in a “student-driven learning” focus, as opposed to traditional teaching models of students sitting in rows while a teacher stands in front of the class.
“So now what’s happening more is if you go through that building on many days, what you’ll see is students working in groups, working by themselves, some of them working with a teacher … the building really allows for that in a way that our other educational spaces do not,” Upton added.
That student freedom has been a boon for better workflow, according to Samohi junior Dalia Puchalt, who co-founded the school’s Architecture and Design Club for students to better understand the inner workings of building construction.
“Lots of students enjoy going to the communal spaces, and they find that they’re more efficient in getting (their) work done out there … it’s just a much more welcoming space,” Puchalt said.
Samohi Principal Marae Cruce added that the Discovery learning spaces help students “develop some of the soft skills needed to be successful in college and careers,” such as fostering more peer collaboration.
“When teachers incorporated the flexible seating in and around the classroom, students started to see the possibilities,” Cruce said. “Now we see students naturally gravitated to some of the spaces and working together in small study groups.”
Other changes that Upton said students were “pretty adaptable” to during their time on campus were completed air conditioning upgrades, a re-adaptation of the Business Building to incubate Career Technical Education (CTE) programs, and a Samohi campus plan that created “new traffic patterns” to get around campus.
One of the most important facility changes at Samohi, though, is one that the Class of 2024 will not be on campus to see completed. Throughout their time at Samohi, construction has been ongoing on the new Exploration Building and Gold Gymnasium, slated to be open for returning students in August.
The new building will include upgraded workshops for CTE students and state-of-the-art studio spaces for visual art, film and photography students. The Gold Gym, replacing the old South Gym, will feature dance and pep squad studios, new courts for basketball and volleyball, a yoga room and outdoor yoga area, as well as a new fitness room and outdoor fitness area.
“These will be really great spaces for physical education and (sports in the) athletics program,” Upton said.
Puchalt was recently given a tour of the Exploration and Gold Gym site, and is similarly thrilled with what’s coming to campus.
“I told friends of mine and peers about certain aspects of the building that were really appealing to me, like the outdoor spaces for the visual arts and the updated equipment for all the multimedia classrooms,” Puchalt said. “I think that some people really did not know that the buildings would have these features … so I think everyone’s really excited to see (the) new approach that these buildings can provide for us for learning.”
Though the Class of 2024 will not partake in those buildings, it had to deal with a host of changes in its own right, keeping heads high throughout.
“With any construction, it’s challenging when it happens, we know that it’s impactful to students and teachers,” Upton said. “I mean, the students are really resilient, they go with the flow, but it’s a challenge. We know that, but we are always trying to improve the educational facilities and make them better for students.”
