geek.teacher

I’ll leave it in more capable hands to summarize the experience of EduCon. This, my second year, was filled with joy and struggle. Joy at the opportunity to get together with people I love spending time with from previous experiences, and so many new people as well. And I didn’t even get to see everybody I wanted to! The struggle, however, comes with being confronted by the powerful ideas presented by the others in conversations, and coming up against the brick wall standing between the way I teach now and the way I want to teach.

I spent the latter half of my awesome second day wracking my brain for changes that I can absolutely make in my classroom on Monday, keeping in mind the restrictions I already have to teach under. This couldn’t be a full on reboot of my classroom, but I knew I had to do something drastic enough to prove to myself that I’m committing to improving myself as a teacher.

I finally decided that I need to release some of the responsibility in my classroom to the students.

Perhaps in a bit of overreaction to my terrible first year as a teacher, I became a benevolent dictator of a teacher. It’s worked for me, especially in light of the curricular restrictions placed on me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to be something better.

I’ve spent the year telling my class that I’m always trying to be a better teacher, so that made the first part of my explanation easy. I told them that I wanted to try something new with them, and that I couldn’t do it without them. I reviewed the first half of the year for them, and some of the seating arrangements that we’ve tried this year, some more successful than others. I had them stand up and move their desks all to the edges of the classroom. I then dropped the bomb:

They were going to choose where they sit.

Not just in the sense that I would place desks in nice, neat rows and let them choose their seat, but that they would have control over where their seat was placed. I talked about different arrangements they might want to choose, such as sitting with a desk touching a partner’s desk, or setting up a table of four desks. I talked about how, if they’re the type who feels they need more personal space, they might choose to sit a bit away from others in the class. I talked about how this would give us increased flexibility in setup of the classroom, and how, if a student ends up not liking his chosen spot, he or she is free to move it at any time.

We talked about the purpose of school, and how we needed to take that purpose into consideration when choosing where to sit. I explained to them that I had two requirements for them:

1. They had to choose a spot where they can see the board and projector screen.
2. They had to leave enough space for people to be able to walk around the room freely as needed.

I then plated the final thought in their heads that they needed to choose who they sit next to carefully, as they would be best off trying to avoid people that will possibly get them into trouble, either by fooling around or arguing. I made them sit and think quietly on that for one minute.

Then I let them loose.

Here’s what we ended up with by the end of the day:

I had to make two slight adjustments to their arrangement: the front row was claustrophobically close to the board, which made it awkward for moving around up there, and the six seats right up front there were all jammed together originally, so I split them in half so we could have a space to easily walk between the board and desks.

Observations:

• They wanted to be a lot closer to the board than I anticipated
• Slightly more than half the class (6/11) wanted to be very close and chummy, slightly less wanted their space, so they hung back some, but even still very close in
• The desk that’s pushed farthest to the back and opposite side was actually much closer before, but he moved it in the middle of the day to be back further, and at the end of the day moved again because he always wants to talk to my assistant, which then makes him ignore his work or have her get mad because she’s trying to get work done!
• Nobody wanted to try facing each other right now, they all wanted to face forward. I’m guessing that’s all they’re used to, so it’s what they’re most comfortable with right now
• The kids were absolutely beaming at having this responsibility

The best part of the entire thing for me was after they were finished moving their seats around. I asked them if they would like to explain why they moved their seats to where they did. They talked about wanting to be closer to the board because it was easier to see, or because they like going to the board so they want to be able to get to it quickly if they’re called on. They talked about sitting close to their friends. They talked about being near somebody, but it being somebody they thought they wouldn’t talk to at inappropriate times. They talked about how they don’t like to sit too close to other people. They talked about ow easy it would be to share things in the new setup. Kids who rarely want to talk in class volunteered this information, in addition to the usual suspects that would monopolize the time if they could. They showed a lot of thought put into their places.

They started to take some responsibility for their own learning. Rock on.

I do at least want to throw in some shout-outs here to Danja Mahoney, Mike Springer, Beth Knittle, David Warlick, Mike Wacker, Christine Southard, Kathleen McClaskey, Brian C. Smith, Lisa Parisi, Paul Bogush, and Beth Lloyd for facilitating the conversations I went to this weekend. You were all knowledgeable, informative, and inspiring, and the things I did today and the things I plan to do in the future wouldn’t be possible without you.

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