Ready for Take Off

There's been a bit of a backlash lately in education settings against the overly done, overly simulated, decorated classroom. And I’ll be honest—I felt weird about that backlash. Because on the one hand, I generally agree. I think those rooms are overdone, and I think they are overstimulating. But there's always been this thought in the back of my head that it's still very Disney to hit all the senses, to keep things interesting. That’s what it means to be engaging, right?

Well, no.

These classrooms really just fits in with the modern TikTok brain-rot nonsense that is all over the place. It’s stimulation for stimulation’s sake. It’s color for color’s sake. It’s just loud. There’s not really much rhyme or reason to it. And frankly, that’s what most Single-A baseball is going to be—constant entertainment, random things like T-shirt cannons and hot dog races or whatever. Just random things to entertain you so you forget that you’re watching a baseball game, but in the long run, it really doesn’t matter.

And don’t get me wrong—the Tower Buzzers certainly still had all of that. But what really set the experience apart was the fact that it was all narrative-driven throughout the entire stadium.

It was very similar to what you'd see in my classroom on a typical day. The music fit the theme - mostly. There were video clips from popular movies. The uniforms that were worn by the cast members all fit the theme. Even the naming conventions of the various restaurants—it was not at all what I expected.

Even as I sat and enjoyed the game—the very first win for our brand-new Ontario Tower Buzzers, by the way—I didn’t really think about how much of it was narrative-driven. It’s in your face in a sense, but it’s all subtle enough that it’s not overpowering. At no point did the narrative take away from the game on the field. Those brain-rot in-between-inning activities certainly did, but that overall narrative theme just enhanced the experience to an incredible degree.

So how do you make a baseball stadium feel like an airport?

Well, as I said, you start with the naming conventions. The entrance literally says “Gate A, Arrivals.” The uniforms for the various workers are great, ranging from flight suits to captain outfits, with all the accoutrements in between. You have the large walkway painted to look like a landing strip. You have the ushers with guiding lights that look exactly like the runway strip power-light things used by runway attendants. You even have the opening video talking about guest behavior done in the style of a pre-flight check with a flight attendant.

And of course, there are so many more obvious things, such as the name of the team—the Tower Buzzers—or the mascot, Maverick, named after the character in Top Gun. There’s a really cool bomber jacket-style coat as merch, and in the main store there’s an arrivals and departures screen that I think was showing actual arriving and leaving flights from the nearby Ontario Airport. Even the first pitch was thrown out by an actor from the original Top Gun.

None of those things have anything to do with the game on the field, but they made the stadium experience itself—well—magical.

I found myself wondering which Disney Imagineer was behind this experience. It really had that feeling too. It wasn’t a ride, but it would not have felt out of place in Disneyland. In fact, I’d say it’s much more themed to a narrative than even the new Avengers Campus.

That’s the main criticism I see about these overstimulating classrooms—that it really doesn’t have anything to do with school or learning, that it’s just distraction for distraction’s sake. That, I think, is the response that I have a knee-jerk rejection to. I have long said, and still firmly believe, that an engaged mind is a learning mind.

But I think the problem—and where my disagreement with both the TikTok classroom and the reaction to it comes—is that it really isn’t about engagement in that case. Throwing tons of random decorations, student work, and multiple colors all over your walls may make for an initial impression of excitement, but it doesn’t lead to long-term engagement. It isn’t a story. It’s a mess of brain rot.

ONTField still has many of the other conventions of a baseball stadium. There’s still a scoreboard. There’s still a game of baseball. There’s still plenty of food and alcohol to buy. And of course, they still had those brain-rot-like mini-games between nearly every inning. But it’s all wrapped in this stadium with the narrative of the airport.

In the same way, even the most overstimulating classroom still has the conventions of education. The problem is those conventions can be overwhelmed and drowned out.

Engagement absolutely should still be our goal. And classroom design plays a huge part in that. Decorations do matter. How we dress does matter. Lighting and sound design inside our four walls do matter. But the question is: how do we make it so those things work together to tell a story?

That is how the human mind is built. We learn that story structure of beginning, middle, and end from, well, our very beginning. In fact, I’d argue that it’s wired in our DNA. Humans have shared stories with that same structure for as long as we’ve been around. And there’s value in bringing that story into our classrooms.

I’ve asked this question many times before: what is the story of your classroom? Or perhaps more simply, what’s the story of your lesson for that day? How are you telling that story? What visuals play into it? What sounds?

In my classroom this week, for example, we had quite a few stories that played out. We started the week by learning about the role of the Mongols in history by living out the story of a trader crossing the Silk Road, both pre- and post-Mongols. Visually, it was simple. Students just read mock journal entries enhanced with pencil sketches of things they encountered along the way. Then, we learned about stress and anxiety and how they affect the brain by following the story of Inside Out 2. And then we closed out the week by introducing Japan by time traveling back to learn about how a society could develop nearly the same government as Europe without ever contacting them.

Could all of those things have been learned in the traditional method of lecture or textbook reading? Sure. But I doubt it would have stuck. And I doubt many students would have cared to be engaged at all.

It is part of our job to engage our students. And yes—despite it being unpopular—I’ll say again: it is part of our job to be entertaining. But that doesn’t mean we have to be doing these random, seemingly distracting things. We just have to wrap our learning in a story.

There are now dozens of examples of this all across this website, and now there’s perhaps an even better example of it being done in a non-education setting.

I’d like to thank the Tower Buzzers for making this awesome experience—and showing me that what I’ve been trying to do for the last 10 years is still the right path.

I’m ready for takeoff!