12-05-2025
Holland elementary school will be partially designed by students, with help from AI
HOLLAND, Mich. (WOOD) — A Holland elementary school is set to be remodeled this summer and its students got to play a role in the design process — with some help from AI.
West Elementary at near Ottawa Avenue is due for upgrades to make the former middle school more suitable for elementary education. The project is part of ',' a $74.65 million bond voters passed in 2021 for district-wide improvements.
As local architect company designs the space, it partnered with David Tebo, director of innovation services at Ottawa Area Intermediate School District, to find a way to use AI to help the students give input on what they want it to look like.
'It's easier when they're older, because they've got more life experience. They've got a better vocabulary. They can communicate what they like and what they don't like,' Jeff Hoag, architect and educational planner at GMB, told News 8. 'When we get into some of our younger learners, it's always been a challenge: How do we get input from some of our youngest students in a way that's meaningful, that we can incorporate into our design process?'
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'Our theory of action was, if we give kids some tools and we let their creativity blossom, we can actually get really good feedback from a group of students that we haven't been able to get feedback from in the past in a meaningful way that would we could actually then deliver on,' Tebo said.
Hoag and Tebo worked with leadership at Holland Public Schools to plan a day when they could get input from the students. As part of the school's STEM special class, they held about 17 workshops throughout the day. The students were encouraged to draw or write what they wanted in a classroom. They then brought the paper to Tebo and described what they created. He put their ideas into ChatGPT, alongside some parameters he created, and it was able to immediately create a design for the students.
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The kids were excited to see how accurate the image was compared to what they imagined.
'It's like it takes the picture right out of my head. It was really cool,' Alaia Folkert, a fifth grader at West Elementary, said.
'It almost did exactly what I was thinking,' fifth grader Elliegh Garcia added. 'There was some adjustments, but it did almost exactly what I wanted it to.'
A lot of the students asked for details like soft seating, cubbies built into the wall and natural light. They wanted a space that had few distractions so they would be able to focus.
The students also got to give input on themes.
'I wanted night time type of style,' Elliegh said. '(With) stars and cubbies basically in the wall.'
'Mine was pretty specific and a little hard to do,' Alaia said. 'It was an under-the-sea thing and I wanted a little section in the middle where it was a giant squid. That was like, you could go in it, and it's a little nook to read.'
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Other themes students imagined included the beach, outdoors or camping, candy shops, basketball courts and outer space.
'One of them was space kittens, which I think was really a fun idea,' Alaia said.
As he showed the students some of the designs, Tebo said it was amazing to hear them get excited to see their own designs come to life and cheer on their friends' designs.
The diverse population, he said, came some wide-ranging results.
'One of the most powerful ones for me — and for the rest of my life I'll remember this — was we had a we had a blind student, and when he came up with his prompt, it was all about the things that those of us who aren't blind take for granted,' Tebo said. 'He wanted the room to feel a way he wanted to.'
The student wanted elements like a calming lavender smell, low noise levels soft seating. After the workshop, Tebo said the student hung back so he could describe every part of the image to him.
'To be able to give voice to kids who don't normally get their voice heard in a space was probably one of the most rewarding educational things I've been able to be a part of,' he said.
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After the workshops, Tebo spent a few days going through everything the students came up with and input the ideas into a spread sheet to find common threads. From there, the team sent the results back to the school and the STEM teachers had a follow-up session with the kids, having them vote on a few different themes and characteristics.
The project is still in the design process as GMB takes what the kids asked for and turns it into something that is code-compliant, safe and easy to maintain, Hoag explained. They are also aiming to have the designs fit into curriculum standards at the different grade levels.
'The idea is to say, how do we take all of that and create spaces that not only are fun to learn and comfortable to learn, but also can be used in a way that support educational delivery and curriculum?' Hoag said.
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While Alaia and Elliegh won't be able to learn inside the space they helped designed because they'll be headed into middle school next year, they're excited for the students that will be able to use it.
'I think that they'll have a really good time in there,' Alaia said. 'I feel like it's a good space for people, for kids that have a hard time focusing in a classroom.'
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