This Wichita school is redesigning the one-room schoolhouse for the modern age

Think of the Learning Lab as the ‘WeWork of education.’

In Wichita, Kansas, a new type of K-12 school welcomed its first students this month. But the 15,000-square-foot Learning Lab, located on the second story of the city’s landmarked Union Station, doesn’t have anything that resembles a typical classroom inside. During its open house, a group of students drew on moveable white boards located at one end of the long light-filled floor. In the bustling makerspace, kids cut up construction paper for collages. Meanwhile, a group of students in different grades quietly hung out in a phone-booth-like pod nearby.