Have you tried to work with your local school district to implement school-based design curriculum and run into a wall? 

At the 2009 AAO conference, Krisann Rehbein, Education Specialist at the Chicago Architecture Foundation, moderated a session with Manny Juarez, Principal/Project Manager at Design Plus Education and Anna Sanko, Executive Director of the Architecture Resource Center.  By using Design Plus Education and the Architecture Resource Center's programs as models, Krisann, Manny and Anna shared their insights and tips for how to successfully integrate programs and curriculum into schools, as well as pointers about how to engage teachers and school administrators in the classroom.

Check out their awesome presentation from the AAO conference.

Krisann Rehbein, Education Specialist, Chicago Architecture Foundation

Krisann Rehbein is an Education Specialist for the Chicago Architecture Foundation.  In this capacity, she administers high school education programs for the Foundation including the Newhouse Program + Architecture Competition, the Saturdays in the Studio workshop series.  She served as the project director for CAF's award-winning high school textbook; The Architecture Handbook; A Student Guide to Understanding Buildings.  She is currently co-producing a web-based, interactive design curriculum to be launched in fall 2010.  Krisann began her career as a grassroots organizer in Chicago, New York and Pittsburgh.  She holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and a master's degree in social science from the University of Chicago.  Her master's work focused on land use policy and change in urban neighborhoods.

Manny Juarez, Principal / Project Manager, Design Plus LLC

Manny is a Partner and lead Project Manager for Design Plus. He also oversees graphics, production, and the Education and Community activities for the firm. He has lectured and taught at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution in New York, and internationally in Sendai, Japan. Manny has also participated in workshops sponsored by the Alvar Aalto Academy in Jyväskylä, Finland and DASH.

As a co-founder and instructor for Design Plus' Summer Design Studio at the Albuquerque Academy, he continues the firm's commitment to children, the educational process, and the environment with his leadership and international recognition in the field of design education. He is also a founding member of the international group PLAYCE which promotes design education and environmental awareness for children around the world.

Photography, music, and cinema are brief, but favorite indulgences outside of the office.

Anna Sanko, Associate AIA, Founder and Executive Director, Architecture Resource Center

With a degree in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute, a Connecticut Interior Design license, and architectural training at Harvard University, Anna has practiced professionally for twenty years in architecture and design firms providing design services for corporate, medical, school, government, retail, and industrial facilities nationally. As a project design manager she has provided planning and design assistance ranging from comprehensive plans, economic development strategies and community visions for the design of public spaces, streetscapes and individual community facilities. In all her work she is committed to an inclusive, community-based process, grounded in broad citizen participation and a vision of the design process as a tool for community organizing, empowerment, and capacity-building.

This experience provided the knowledge base from which the idea for the Architecture Resource Center (ARC) has grown. As founder and executive director, Anna leads the collaborative team’s efforts to develop the ARC program and implement its mission and goals. Her development experience has secured the Center over $2,000,000 in grants, contracts, materials, and services. In addition to the day-to-day operation and planning of the program, she works with K-12 student and faculty populations throughout New England. Anna implements ARC professional development and student workshops and has an extensive background working with the underserved at-risk students in Connecticut.

She has successfully taken the ARC’s design program to national and international audiences through conferences and workshops in the United States and Europe. She was one of thirty delegates chosen to represent the United States at the International Experiences Trust Conference in Cambridge, England. Her work has resulted in numerous state, national, and international awards including (among others) the: American Institute of Architects, National Institute Honors Award for Education; J.C. Penney "Golden Rule Award" for Education; Connecticut Alliance for Arts Education, Community Arts Education Award; Hartford Downtown Council Renaissance Award for Education; Public Education Award from the American Planning Association; and, the Creativity Award from the International Downtown Association.

Anna leads ARC efforts to develop and create design curricula and design publications. Her vision and determination have resulted in an individual National Endowment for the Arts grant for the purpose of writing and documenting the Call to the Visionary Artist© program. She was editor, photographer, and contributing writer for the teacher and student editions of New Haven's Cultural Landscape: its changing people and places (NHCL). In the process of creating the NHCL publication and program, Anna and program collaborators learned a great deal about producing a complex, simply-presented, community-based, interdisciplinary tool which have translated easily into an even more compelling statewide program, The Hartford Connection, which she now directs and serves as publication editor.

Anna has participated on Connecticut State Department of Education and Connecticut Business and Industries Curriculum Advisory Committees and as a visiting design critic at the University of Hartford Ward College of Technology, where she has served as an adjunct professor. In 1998 Anna was appointed a Master Teaching Artist for the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and Young Audiences of Connecticut. She is a certified facilitator for Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection education programs and completed a Master of Arts in Education at Goddard College in 2000. She continues her master teaching artist development through participation in Connecticut Culture and Tourism HOT School summer institutes and national design education conferences.