On my last day with desks, I felt a bit apprehensive. Maybe even a bit nostalgic. It has been my ritual for years to walk into my classroom in the morning, put my bag down, and straighten the rows of desks. It gives me a sense of order, a good starting point for the day. But when I saw the maintenance guys that Friday afternoon sizing up the job of desk removal from my classroom, I wondered if maybe I had signed on for something I wasn’t really ready for.
In my 19 years of teaching, I have always had desks in rows, and I have gotten pretty good at standing in front of my students and getting them to direct their attention to me. I have cultivated the skill of reading a crowd of teenagers, getting a little louder and more serious if they get a bit squirrely, playing the fool if I need their attention, snapping students back into the lesson if they are turned around or sneaking Instagram. When I’m on, I’m an orchestra conductor, and I can get all the eyes in desk rows to stay on me and whatever I have projected on the board. I’ve even had moments, after finishing an especially riveting performance, where I have wondered whether I shouldn’t try to find a stand-up comedy troupe, or try out for a small role in a play at the Lesher.
The class discussion has been my jam for years, and there have been plenty of days when I left school in the afternoon with my head held high, congratulating myself for the lively discussions I facilitated. Those upright arms are like a forest of engagement, and it’s thrilling to know this thing I created is rocking, like learning is happening. And for those 12 to 15 students, some learning has probably happened. But if I’m looking at the entire picture, that means there were 15 to 20 for whom I have no idea what was happening. At Carondelet, many of our students have cultivated a quiet learning posture that makes them look brightly engaged on the outside, but who knows what is going through their minds. I know I have sat through plenty of PD presentations (and let’s be honest, some faculty meetings too) maintaining an outward appearance of engagement while my mind is surfing from the things I need to get done that afternoon to my son’s little league game to the trails I plan to run on my weekend long run to the type of beer I like best at Calicraft. And I know I can dive even deeper if there is absolutely no threat that I will be called on.
So on the first day with new furniture, I wondered how much it would impact my teaching habits. Kevin came into my classroom in the morning, bursting with excitement. One of the first students who walked into the room said she felt like she worked at Google, and I told her there was not a more perfect comment she could have made in front of Mr. Cushing. As the rest of the students came in throughout the day, I told them that there would be no seating chart, and I watched to see which spaces each one gravitated towards. They tried out the wheels on the chairs by rolling around the room, they slouched on the couch (Kevin did this too) and they spun. They went on dizzy spinning sprees, the dancers and ice skaters knowing how to spot the front of the room to keep from getting nauseous. They were genuinely excited, but I left school that day wondering what exactly it was that I was missing.
In the next few days I studied my students’ interactions with the furniture surreptitiously, and I also noticed my own habits. The way I configured the tables and chairs has really taken away the front of the classroom. The only reason I stand where I do is because that is the direction the projector is aimed. I also noticed that I have a clingy attachment to my podium. I found myself drifting towards the podium – which is now shoved in a nook next to some cupboards – reaching out for it when I talked, propping my arm on top of it awkwardly. When I told Kevin about this, he pointed out that my podium is my stage, and I realized he is right.
Overall I really didn’t expect new furniture to affect my thinking about teaching in such impactful ways, and some of the realizations I’ve come to in the past few weeks have been unexpected. In an effort to be brief (which is a challenge for me), I’ve narrowed my experiences with the new furniture to these four takeaways:
1. That boy who used to drive me crazy with his constant fidgeting and tapping actually needs to fidget and tap to focus. If fact it seems pretty counterintuitive that engagement (with a text, with writing, with a lecture) would happen best while sitting still and silently. Yesterday I asked a student why she always trades out the stationary high top chair for one with wheels, and she said that she pays more attention when she has the freedom to move around a bit.
2. This is actually a continuation of my first point, but learning is often noisy and chaotic. It has been a little bit jarring for me to realize this, but when students are interacting with one another, I can hear their ideas, which allows for more teachable moments where I can confirm, challenge, redirect, or expand. This reminds me that just because students are sitting silently with their phones put away staring at a text or assignment does not mean they are fully engaged. This has also transformed my thinking about the noise in the inner court during classes – there is a melody to it now.
3. There is a big difference between group work and teaming. Students often perceive group work as the break – the fun or creative assignment that mixes up the minutia. I used to think of it in the same way. But now, with all the spinning and rolling and fidgeting, I have been very intentional to create a learning environment in which the majority of my class activities are conducted within team interactions. When teaming is leveraged effectively, students can learn much better from their classmates than I could ever hope to accomplish in big class discussions. It is a bit of a cultural shift for them to differentiate between groups and teams, and I need to be explicit about my expected outcomes for each project and about teaming dynamics. This is the puzzle this year that is constantly buzzing around my head, and I’m grateful to have Sarah and Rachel from Teaming by Design to advise.
4. My presence is kind of diminished in the class. This chops away at the ego a bit because I have definitely cultivated my teaching persona over the years. But I can also acknowledge that this persona has been a bit of a crutch for me at times, and has covered up some of my weaknesses as a teacher. Even if I do feel like a bit of a ghost now, I am still able to develop rapport with my students, and enough of them still come bug me throughout the day that I think they still like me well enough.
If anyone wants to continue the conversation on furniture or the intersection between teaming and furniture, let me know. Also if you want to schedule a classroom swap one day to try out the furniture, I’m open to it. I’m realizing that timed writes do not work as well on tables so Tiz and I are trading spaces today so that my A.P. students can use desks. I think that having a variety of learning spaces for different types of activities would be ideal, but I’ll put that idea in the cue for a different blog.
