MuNa/narratives/03-school-group.md

# School Group / Children's Narrative — Casa de la Memoria Andina

*Viewpoint: a school group — teacher, chaperones, and children from roughly
six to sixteen years old — visiting the museum for the day.*

For the shared facts underlying everything below — site data, the
CR1/OP2/OP4 color and ornament systems, materials strata, and the full
named-realm mapping — see `ref/project-chassis.md`. This narrative extends
the school-group moments already present in `narratives/01-visitor.md` (the
Civic Atrio sized to absorb school groups, the Great Hall stair as
gathering point) and the educator spaces described in
`narratives/02-staff.md`; it does not redescribe those rooms differently,
only from a child's eye level and pace.

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## Arrival: the bus, the atrio, the count

The bus stops where service and drop-off traffic is kept visually
subordinate to the entrance portal, exactly as `narratives/01-visitor.md`
describes for all visitors — no separate "school entrance" is needed,
because the Civic Atrio was already sized, per that narrative, to "absorb
school groups and a daily attendance in the tens of thousands." A teacher
doing a headcount before the portal has the low sitting walls and planted
terraces (pattern 106 Positive Outdoor Space) to gather thirty children
without spilling into the street, and the activity pockets lining the
atrio's edge — the kiosk, the bookstall, the sheltered benches (pattern
124 Activity Pockets) — give restless children something to look at while
the count happens twice.

## Threshold, at child height

The zaguán's staged transition — street to portal to cool dim passage to
sudden sunlit patio, described fully in `narratives/01-visitor.md` — reads
differently to an eight-year-old than to an adult: the change from bright
street to shadowed passage to bright patio again is a more dramatic
sequence of thresholds when your own vantage point is lower. Ornament
density peaking at the portal (`ref/project-chassis.md` §1's OP2 rule) puts
the chakana-derived stepped mouldings and door pulls closest to the ground
right where the portal is thickest with detail — which is also, at a
child's height, where they are easiest to see and touch.

## The Great Hall: the stair as the day's gathering point

`narratives/01-visitor.md` describes the main staircase as "a room in its
own right... where school groups assemble, talks are given" (pattern 133
Staircase as a Stage). For a school group this is the anchor of the entire
visit: the broad, shallow steps near the floor function as tiered seating
built into the architecture itself (pattern 202 Built-In Seats — tested,
per that pattern, for a spot people actually want to sit in, not merely
one that looks like seating). A guide can address thirty or sixty children
at once without a microphone, and — because the perimeter of the hall
"drops to a human register" (`narratives/01-visitor.md`) — the alcoves and
window seats around its edge let a chaperone keep a wandering child in
sight without leaving the group. From the upper landings, repeated views
back to the entrance patio (again per the Visitor narrative) mean a child
who gets briefly separated can re-orient by sight, toward a place, not a
floor number or a sign.

## Moving through the collections at a child's pace

The building thoroughfares (pattern 101 Building Thoroughfare, 4.5–6 metres
wide per `ref/project-chassis.md`) are wide enough that a school group
moving as a loose cluster does not block individual visitors, and the
"several parallel loops" `narratives/01-visitor.md` describes — a group can
peel off into the archaeological loop while another group is in the
historical Corredor of Time — mean two school groups from different towns
never have to queue behind each other through a single forced route.

In the archaeological wing, the small gold piece "in a low, protected
niche at close range" (`narratives/01-visitor.md`) is exactly the kind of
object a child can approach at their own height without a rope barrier
looming overhead; the monumental stone in its taller vaulted chamber gives
the same group an experience of scale in the other direction. The
restrained trapezoidal door-thresholds mentioned there are subtle enough
that a class doesn't need them explained to feel a room has changed
register.

Along the Corredor of Time (the historical wing, per
`ref/project-chassis.md` §2), the periodic common-room expansions
described in the Visitor narrative — "where groups can rest and rejoin" —
are where a school group actually stops for its scheduled break: built-in
seating (pattern 202), daylight, and a view, sized for a class rather than
a single family. A teacher can hold a short discussion here without
leaving the route or needing a separate room booked in advance.

## The education wing: workshops as the day's second half

Per `narratives/02-staff.md`, the education wing holds the educators'
preparation room, materials store, and office, opening onto the same court
the café faces. For the school group, this wing is where the day's
structured workshop happens — object-handling sessions using teaching
replicas prepared by the educators described in the Staff narrative,
in a room scaled and furnished for groups of thirty rather than the
individual-visitor scale of the galleries. Because the educators can watch
the Civic Atrio and Great Hall stair through window bays
(`narratives/02-staff.md`), a workshop can start the moment a group
arrives without a chaperone having to go looking for staff.

## Outdoor time: patios as recess, not just scenery

Every named court in this building is a real outdoor room, not a view
seen through glass (pattern 115 Courtyards Which Live), and for a school
group that matters practically: the Patio of Origins and the Garden of the
Arts (`ref/project-chassis.md` §2) are places a class can be released to
move, sit, and eat a packed lunch between gallery sessions, under cover if
an afternoon storm arrives, per the same corredor-shelter
`narratives/01-visitor.md` describes for all visitors. A tired six-year-old
gets a change of pace and daylight before the next room, not another
corridor.

## What this avoids

Per `ref/critique-failures.md`, school groups are the stakeholder most
exposed to two named failures of the winning proposal: **inhuman scale**
(failure #7 — "look how small the people are compared to the mass") and
**illegible circulation** (failure #10 — nobody able to tell what kind of
building they're in). Every element above — the human-register hall
perimeter, the built-in stair seating, the named realms in place of floor
numbers, the child-height ornament at the portal — is a direct,
pattern-grounded answer to those two failures specifically, not a generic
"child-friendly" gesture.