QUEZON CITY, Philippines — “Dapat may tree!” (There should be trees!) a grade school student from Diosdado P. Macapagal Elementary School exclaims, as he sits on the floor with other schoolmates, arranging twigs, leaves, and flowers in the shape of a schoolyard.
Outside, sixth graders are preparing for their moving-up ceremonies. But these 20 kids, ranging from six to ten years old, are working in circles on the floor of the public school’s audio visual room. More kids walk into the room with a handful of dirt. Except to these kids, this isn’t just dirt. It’s the makings of a flower garden for their “dream” schoolyard, one they are creating on the floor.
What if kids were given the power to design their own schoolyard? What would it look like? And how would they use it?
On this morning last May 21, these students of Diosdado P. Macapagal Elementary School or DPMES for short, were participating in a co-design and consultation session led by the Resilient Cities Network.
This urban resilience non-profit is part of a project with the Quezon City government that aims to make schools more prepared for climate-related impacts like flooding and intense heat. Called the OASIS Schoolyards program, one of its distinctive features is participatory planning: including the students and teachers in the design of the schoolyards they will use.
The program is funded by the Temasek Foundation, a Singapore-based non-profit that serves as the philanthropic arm of the Singapore government’s sovereign fund. It has partnered with Resilient Cities Network to help implement the program in the Philippines.
DPMES is one of three public schools selected for the project. The other two are Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School and Placido Del Mundo Elementary School.
These schools were selected based on their vulnerability to heatwaves and flooding, and the availability of open spaces within their campuses.
Visualizing the ideal schoolyard
These activities with twigs, leaves, and flowers aren’t just play, but give life to the project’s approach to participatory planning and co-designing.
In the co-designing workshop, elementary school students mapped out areas in their school that they felt could be improved. They also identified “activity hot spots,” or areas where students spent the most time during school hours. This helped the participants in creating miniature models of their “dream” schoolyards.
The students first roamed the school grounds gathering materials that could be used to build their schoolyard models — rocks, sticks, leaves, and even flowers.
Along with bits of clay, paper, and photo printouts, they used these to represent chairs, benches, trees, gardens, and play pens in their “dream” schoolyard.
Since early March this year, the program has already conducted a series of assessments and consultations with teachers and students from the selected schools. DPMES in Barangay Tatalon, Quezon City served as the last stop for the first phase, with about 40 students and teachers as participants.
TANATA, a holistic design company in charge of consolidating the final schoolyard designs, will use these inputs from the students to come up with plans that would also take into account the schools’ spatial limitations.
Students designing for students
The co-designing process begins with the students, who know their school best and how the school’s areas are used.
Eli, an eight-year-old third grade student, for example, recommended certain improvements.
“Gusto ko pong dagdagan [ang mga upuan na may sandalan] kasi po ang mga estudyante po rito, pagkatapos po ng pag-aaral nila, gusto nilang mag-hangout muna or chill bago umuwi. (I want to add more benches with backrests around the school grounds because students after their classes want to hangout or chill first before going home.)
“Gusto ko rin po na ma-flatten ‘yong ground [sa mga piling areas] kasi po may [mga] nadapa na po doon (I also want to flatten the ground [in some areas] since there were students who tripped there already),” Eli added.
Angelo, a first-grade pupil, also wants more resting spots.
“Dito po [sa playground] po yung upuan para magpahinga po yung mga naglalaro. Tapos [dito naman] po para makaikot-ikot ang mga bata diyan (The playground should have benches so the children playing can rest. Then this area can be where kids can roam around),” he said, as he explained his model schoolyard.
Meanwhile, other students suggested more greeneries and safe play areas.
“Nilagay ko po mga flowers and puno para hindi mainit sa school. Naglagay din po ako ng park at plants (I added flowers and trees so it won’t be hot in the school. I also placed a park and plants),” grade one student Elisha shared while presenting their work to the organizers.
Designing for climate resilience
The OASIS model stands for “Openness, Adaptation, Sensitization, Innovation and Social Ties.”
This program is inspired from the Paris OASIS Schoolyard program that was able to reduce schoolyard temperatures in the French capital and was part of the city’s overall “resilience strategy.”
“We want to adopt the Paris OASIS model [here in QC]. They were able to reduce the heat to 2°C to 4°C [on] a microscale, in the neighborhood scale. The situation is quite similar,” Aurora Lokita, program manager of Resilient Cities Network said.
However, the on-the-ground realities are different in the Philippines, a tropical country that is hit by around 20 typhoons a year.
“We need to adapt to the local context. The size of schools in Paris is quite small, compared [to] here in the Philippines. You have one school that has 7,000 or 8,000 students, so it’s really different,” Lokita added.
The Department of Education (DepEd) said the country was short of 159,000 classrooms for academic year 2023 to 2024. This means that schools are forced to cram too many students in classrooms or must resort to alternative spaces, often not suited to holding classes.
When schools are used as evacuation centers
Ironically, weeks after the co-design workshops in Diosdado Macapagal P. Elementary School, the school’s first day of classes had to be postponed because of a typhoon.
The school was used as an evacuation center for nearby residents affected by flooding caused by the southwest monsoon enhanced by Typhoon Carina. The elementary school is not officially used as an evacuation center. But nearby Dr. Josefa Jara Martines High School, the school that usually serves as an evacuation center, was being demolished at the time of the flooding.
“Technically speaking, [DPMES] is not a designated evacuation center. Dr. Josefa Jara Martines High School is. However, during that time, Jara had an ongoing demolition. Kaya hindi siya nakatanggap ng evacuees. (That’s why they did not received evacuees.),” school administrator Cristian Timonan shared with Rappler.
DPMES was used as a temporary shelter for 2,137 individuals or 514 families.
Because of this, the school was among the 738 public schools in four regions that were not able to begin classes on July 29 because of flooding and landslides caused by the enhanced southwest monsoon.
What happened to DPMES illustrates the consequences to basic education posed by the common policy of using school buildings as evacuation centers. It shows how education and education infrastructure have to be part climate resilience planning, both at the local and national level.
For DPMES and their community, flooding is one of their major issues. Flooding is an impact of climate change because multiple studies have shown how global warming has led to more extreme rainfall events.
“Maswerte yung school namin na hindi kami totally naaabot ng baha. (We are lucky that our school does not get flooded),” said Timonan.
“If the weather worsens, it takes a whole village to address the drainage situation. Also, the vicinity of the school is on a low-lying area with creeks and rivers surrounding us,” he added.
The project also seeks to make schoolyards better prepared, not just for rain, but also for heat. In April, classes frequently got suspended due to extreme heat in schools.
Elijah Go Tian of the Resilient Cities Network said the group will propose the use of permeable surfaces that don’t absorb and store as much heat, and thus don’t contribute to the heat island effect. These surfaces are also able to absorb rainwater, thus reducing surface runoff, and ultimately, flooding.
Making the most of school space
What’s common among the three QC schools is the lack of spaces where students can stay and play, a deficiency that teachers also pointed out when they participated in the co-designing workshops and consultation sessions.
This lack was most felt in Placido Del Mundo Elementary School and Manuel L. Quezon Elementary School, said Alfonso Ancheta, co-founder of TANATA. The shifting class schedules also prevent students from staying longer in the campus to rest.
“Most of the spaces we have in public schools are just transient spaces, spaces that people just walk past,” Ancheta said.
What if there were ways to develop these often ignored areas into areas students could benefit more from?
This is what makes the co-design and consultation sessions with students critical. The students, after all, would be the best people to say what types of activities or design would induce them to stay in an area longer, or use it in productive and enriching ways.
“[We can] either do this through play, community, socialization, and maybe change the school program where we allow students to go out [to the school grounds] or stay after school hours just so they can hang out with their friends,” said Ancheta.
The teachers and school administrators of Diosdado P. Macapagal Elementary School said they wanted their schoolyard to be a collaborative space where students can discover more about themselves and their peers. How can school spaces foster creativity, friendships, and productivity?
“Overall, the main goal of the OASIS project is to develop the school grounds into more functional areas aside from being mere school grounds,” school administrator Cristian Timonan said.
The DPMES teachers also envisioned their school grounds to be used for sports, given how their students regularly participate in the Palarong Pambansa, the annual multi-sport event for student athletes organized by the Department of Education.
“Our school is sports-inclined. We envision that the project can incorporate areas that are developed to have sports and exercise area, and where our athletes can inspire their co-students to join sports and participate in sports activities,” said Timonan.
A model for other Quezon City schools
So far, there are no plans to expand to other cities and municipalities. But according to Resilient Cities Network, the Quezon City local government already expressed interest in replicating the project across its city schools division.
“QC [Quezon City] has almost 150 public schools both elementary and [high schools], the replication of this project will affect thousands of people,” Go Tian said.
The next phase of the project resumes this month as the new academic year begins. The Resilient Cities Network and TANATA are now crafting a conceptual design based on the students and teachers’ inputs for the three Quezon City schoolyards.
If all goes according to plan, said Go Tian, construction of the schoolyard designs should begin in November or December. – Rappler.com
Schools and campuses that are more adapted to climate change impacts are part of ways to make Philippine cities more liveable. Rappler has a dedicated space for stories about improving quality of life in our cities. Check out the #MakeManilaLiveable page here.