Enjoy all our latest education news and stories
At Natural Pod™, our purpose is to ensure every learner and educator has a practical, healthy, sustainable environment in which to learn and be inspired, enabling them to reach their full potential. You can find all our news and stories here, where we share ideas and thinking that inspire our work to help inspire yours.
How Students Collaborate To Create Their Dream Classroom
We had a very special and unique opportunity to collaborate with this group of mixed grades 6 and 7 students at York House School in Vancouver, Canada, to help and support them in creating their dream learning space. The school is expanding and they will be moving...
Start 2020 With Our Best Education Inspiration Stories
Here is a round up of our best stories from this past year as chosen by our community of educators. These are the stories that inspired, informed or educated. We hope they offer you the same value as you transition from 2019 into the new year and new...
Our CEO Is A Panel Speaker At SXSW EDU 2020!
Our very own Bridgitte Alomes, the CEO and founder of Natural Pod, is a panel speaker at the next SXSW Edu in Austin 2020. Her panel colleagues are some incredible movers and shakers in the education world as you can see below, and this session is sure to...
This Stunning Learning Centre Shares Indigenous And Western Perspectives
Collaborating on incredible projects like this is extra special to us, and this one is quite unique.A new multi-use Learning Centre called the “Aki Centre”, or “Land Centre”, for short, (full name is Ozhaawashkwaa Animikii-Bineshi Aki Onji Kinimaagae’...
Giving Tuesday Was A Great Success, Thanks To You!
As you may know, Natural Pod, VMDO Architects and ShawContract came together on Giving Tuesday in supporting the Green Schools National Network (GSNN) to raise funds for the work and research they do to further the green schools movement and...
New Community Rooftop Childcare Centre Transforms Learning
The Natural Pod team is still talking about how incredible our visit to the first Vancouver rooftop childcare centre was. It was the grand opening of ‘The Village’, the sixth childcare program implemented by Frog Hollow Neighbourhood House. The Village...
Grab A Great Deal On Bundles Of Play Manipulatives!
These bundles of sustainable made play manipulatives are a favorite of early learners, and we're offering significant discounts for educators and learning organizations. Get in touch with our team to learn more about the bundle options and discounts. If...
Giving Tuesday – Help Us Create Greener Schools with Matching Donations.
Join Natural Pod, VMDO Architects and ShawContract on Giving Tuesday while we each match donations up to $2500 USD for the Green Schools National Network (GSNN) to raise funds for the work and research GSNN do to further the green schools movement and...
Sustainability In Schools Isn’t Just About ‘Green’
When talking about teaching environmental and sustainability literacy in schools, we mostly mean educating students to be environmentally responsible. But there is a bigger, deeper meaning here. In order for our future generations to be fluent in...
Give to a ‘Green Schools’ Future for Giving Tuesday
At Natural Pod, we are deeply committed to creating better, sustainable education environments. Our goal is always to honor this by producing healthy, natural, and beautiful play and learning space furniture using environmentally responsible practices and...
Bringing Biomimicry to Oak Park: One Approach to Integrating Biomimicry into the K-12 Curriculum
I first fell in love with biomimicry while attending a county-wide science leadership meeting in February 2017. I was there in my capacity as science department chair at Oak Park High School in California’s Oak Park Unified School District. It was toward...
How Learning Furniture Supports This School’s Learning Philosophy
Odyssey Charter Schools opened their second charter school, OCS-South, in Pasadena, California, last year. Their community presently includes transitional kindergarten through to 4th grade, with the goal of adding an additional grade each year until they...
Why We Should Be Focusing On The Youngest Amongst Us
“We should be focusing on the youngest amongst us” was a statement a friend and experienced educational building architect said to me recently, and it really stuck with me. We were discussing the importance of early learning through the lens of the...
How Students Can Benefit From An Entrepreneurial Mindset
For students to thrive now and in their future they need to learn how to become adaptable lifelong learners. Their future will most likely entail having multiple jobs or careers, not one employment stream for life and we need to prepare them for that. In...
Lasting Learning, Real Impact Through Project-Based Learning
Across diverse contexts, I regularly meet students who are taking action to build a more sustainable future. Whether it’s first-graders designing a rain garden for their playground, middle schoolers educating adults about composting, or high school...
Self-Directed Learning – The Steps to Successful Outcomes
There’s been a lot of emphasis about creating student centered learning environments for a while now. Here we’re taking a deeper dive into how these environments are the gateway to student-led learning, why that's important, what the intended goals are,...
Thinking About Sustainability Within Our Present And Future Environments
With all the global climate strikes that have been happening over the last few weeks, it feels like the perfect time to speak up about a sensitive and related issue. First, I’d like to acknowledge the incredible mobilization of nearly 7 million young...
Connecting With Educators and Thought Leaders At EdSpaces
Our design team and account managers are spreading their wings over the next week as they attend and present at two very different education and thought leadership conferences.First stop is the EdSpaces conference, held this year in Milwaukee, WI. This is one of the...
What Skills Do Students Need In This New Innovation Age?
In education we talk a lot about 21st Century learning, and this term is linked to acknowledging we are now in a new era, ‘the Innovation Age’. It seems to be generally accepted that we are now moving on from the Information Age that's governed the last 40...
Human Centered Design Drives Student Learning at One Stone
What is One Stone? One Stone launched in 2008 as a nonprofit supporting after school experiential service opportunities for high school students (grades 9-12) seeking deep involvement in sustainable outcomes to improve the greater Boise, Idaho...
Learning And Play At Learning Scapes
Bridgitte, Natural Pods CEO, and Shannon, Director of Operations, recently returned from the LearningScapes conference that took place in California this year. Speaking with them post-conference, they shared they found it incredibly impactful. This is what...
Educating Compassionate and Creative Global Citizens
We'd like to share with you this great letter we received along with the parents of the students of Oak Park Unified School District. It beautifully explains the intention and journey of Oak Park USD to create better learning environments that support...
Designing Learning Environments for How Students Learn
The education community, understandably, often tends to think about learning as a product of our education system, though according to research by Dr. Joshua Eyler, learning is, in fact, evolutionary and simply part of our genetic make-up. Therefore,...
Green Schools Network Tackles Whole School Sustainability
Every year an amazing group of people from across North America come together with the purpose of laying the foundation for the next strategic steps for the Green Schools National Network (GSNN). It is also a perfect time for us to break out of our day to day, deepen...
Communities Rally at Climate Strikes and Call for Sustainable Action
Did you take part in one of the climate strikes during the 20-27th September? Many of the Natural Pod team did, joining their children and marching alongside them this past Friday. It was quite an incredible day, with the impact of that action still be...
Design Thinking and Student Travel: Tools To Craft A More Sustainable World
To build a more sustainable planet we need new perspectives. We need to reframe the global challenges of climate change, consumption, and waste, and develop ideas that can change the way the world functions. Design thinking is an incredible tool that...
What Are Students Hoping To Achieve During The Global Student Climate Strike?
As a sustainable educational furniture company that takes its environmental responsibilities very seriously, we are paying close attention to the upcoming Student Global Climate Strike happening between 20th and 27th of September.As a member of the Natural...
Who Won Our Back to School Photo Sharing Contest!
Thank you to all of our amazing community members who shared their inspiring photo entries in our 'Back To School Photo Contest'. It's been such a pleasure to see your wonderful learning environments and the creative use of Natural Pod furniture in your...
Design Thinking As A Framework For Developing And Leading New Approaches To Learning
This brief essay isn’t intended to reiterate the long history of design thinking as best expressed by the brilliant David Kelley, founder of IDEO and the Stanford d.school, as there are numerous resources readily available for educators....
Helping Kids Save The Environment – Part Two
This is the second of two stories from GreenNotes part of the 'Green Schools National Network' - looking at some of the ways that educators are using literacy to deepen students' understanding of sustainability and engage them in meaningful learning...
Helping Students Protect The Environment – Part One
"Environmental and sustainability literacy is needed to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to create the future we want - one with economic opportunity for all, a fair and just society, thriving ecosystems, and healthy human and more than human...
How this Teacher Went Above And Beyond
Sendy, a wonderful Kindergarten teacher, is so committed to the students in her care, that over the summer she acquired a second job to personally pay for additional furniture for her classroom so that the layout could be more collaborative. That's quite...
If There’s No Natural Resources, Then There’s No Business
The term ‘Earth Overshoot Day’ has been used for some time now, but not by many and not often, so the majority of people are unaware that such a calculation even exists, let alone its terrifying and truthful significance.Earth Overshoot Day is “the point...
Vote for Our SXSWedu Session – Help Inspire More Educators!
Join Natural Pod and Green Schools National Network to impact more educators - We have the opportunity to speak on the important topic of 'SUSTAINABILITY & SOCIAL JUSTICE IN K-12 SCHOOLS' at SXSWEdu (South by South West Education) but we need your vote...
How Can We Stop Disengaging Our Students?
I talk to a lot of educators about their thoughts around pedagogy and if their ideas align with their school’s overall culture. Unsurprisingly, almost every teacher I speak to is very clear that the previous century’s classroom layout really isn’t...
Research Report: The Impact Of Learning Spaces on Student Success
You may have noticed for the last few months we've been sharing some interesting research by 'MDR Education' about how education spaces impact learning. Here we have grouped all the individual research pieces together that make up the complete research report 'The...
How Young People Feel About The ‘Green New Deal’
A ‘Green New Deal’ (GND) has been proposed in the US by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Edward Markey. It has many facets, but one of the main aims of the proposal would be to achieve net-zero greenhouse emissions by creating millions of green jobs...
Easy Steps To Creating A Green Sustainable Classroom
Thankfully more and more institutions and organizations are embracing environmental responsibility and becoming advocates for sustainability. This is fantastic, and not a moment too soon. But how, as educators, can we inspire and motivate our students to...
Research: How Satisfied Are Educators With School Renovation Projects
When educators were asked how intentionally planned school construction or renovation projects were evaluated, the largest percentage groups of note, at 30%, said they were evaluated most often for whether they attracted more students. An additional 30% of teachers...