Initial Effects

Design details
So the risers went up, and the regular classroom decorations (borders, instructional posters that no one looked at) started coming down.  After taking all of this down, the walls looked really awful because they are this textured tack board of indiscriminate vomit colour. Based on my experience with The Space in 106 and the effect it had on teachers, I also started putting up decor to soften the room up a little.  I had our TA put up a whole wall of blue paper (which she had to take down and replace with fire retardant paper).  I thought it looked like sky so I had my students sponge paint some clouds onto it.  It didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped and now it looks like a sheep got crushed against the wall.

My teaching partner got into the whole design idea as well.  He removed the really ugly curtains, and brought in a pink beaded string curtain for our classroom door.  Being a tall beast, he helped me suspend some sheers from the ceiling so they looked like clouds.  He now starts the day with an ambient nature CD that has some classical music mixed into it.  He also likes to find some nice nature images to project on the Smartboard.

The Whole Shebang
Today we gave our students the grand effect: risers, decor, mood lighting, sounds, window treatments, unmanly beaded doorway, etc.  The funny thing is that our students took it in stride, but the class across the hall made a bee line for our doorway and were marveling at the spectacle of it all.

I was out of the classroom all morning, but even for a Friday afternoon, I could feel a nice relaxed groove.  We had silent reading and I think the students could have gone all afternoon.  They had their book boxes beside them and comfortable places around the room (on the risers, lying on the floor).  There was a really happy feeling.  The lights were on the low side but no one complained.  It was a pretty great way to spend an afternoon. 

Another interesting thing happened yesterday 

Our district Occupational Therapist, Lynda, happened to be in our school for another reason, but I wanted to grab her and ask her about our new classroom arrangement.  On her way out to her car, I asked her to come back in and have a look.  I was a bit apprehensive because I was worried what she would say about the effect the risers and lapdesks would have on my students' bone and muscle development.  As luck would have it, she really liked the set up!  She thought it afforded a variety of good body positions and even said that lying on the floor (Sphinx style) would be good for writing.  She recommended that students not sit on a pile of soft pillows because of the instability, and that their feet should both be firmly on the ground when writing.  I asked her if it was okay that I had set up one of my students at a window counter, standing up when he writes (because he is surprisingly productive standing) and Lynda assured me that it was perfectly fine.  In fact, she said that writing on a vertical surface was good for development, Smartboard included.  Go figure.

Sign Reads: "Slow, Men Working" or is it, "Slow Men Working"?

So now I had my vision, but reality kept creeping in.

Design

I wanted to build an intimate bank of seating like the Museum of Anthropology, but I knew I didn't have the skills to do semi-circular, so rectangular was my best option.  I designed these double tiered benches that looked like choir risers, but big enough for kids to sit in a number of ways.  I wanted the risers to maintain a variety of body positions for students plus flexibility in the ways I could arrange my room, so they had to be movable.  I mapped out how they would fit in my classroom and how many students would go on them.  I made a floor plan that still had some desks for students who were not ready for such a drastic change.

Permissions
When school opened again after Spring Break, I pitched the idea to my teaching partner.  At first, he looked at me like I had two heads, (but he always looks at me like that).  And being a fresh new, moldable teacher, he kind of shrugged and said, "Okay, let's try it."  The more we talked, the more ideas he pitched in.  He's been really terrific about it, especially as he is in the classroom more than I am. I come up with the weird ideas and he has to deal with the fall-out.  (I LOVE that arrangement.  Many successful businesses and quite a few dictatorships are built on the same solid principle.) 

We ran the idea by our students.  I explained that I wanted our classroom to look less like a classroom so that they didn't think learning just took places that had student desks, colourful borders and posters, signs explaining punctuation etc.  I told them I would be removing most things that you could only find in a school, so that they could start to see that their learning could happen any place.  Their reaction was really interesting.  Not jumping up and down excitement. Not fearful opposition. It was a quiet and thoughtful curiosity with lots of questions helping to refine my vision and their understanding. 


Construction Time

So when my teaching partner and the students gave me the go-ahead, I set to building the risers.  Little did I remember how much plywood costs, and when I costed it out, this venture was going to cost me hundreds of dollars.  I decided to build a few risers at a time to spread out the costs, and to use free and recycled materials as much as possible.  Two of the prototypes I built using doors of an Ikea cabinet that has had many incarnations (toy chest, turned sideways as book shelves, etc.). 

(picture from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiX2yJ1MmxgJxDOa3xfZpg7JM9Ldb22_LyJqZi0EwiRQ0rPGhKGDc-sORGg8MAOwme9svYt9tXJZREj65UdaZ9MK1Ds8kir4637MNqFK2usiUf_I59IAb-_3vODQ8u7n0vQN-3kjw/s400/IkeaWardrobe1.jpg)

Here is what the risers look like.

 

Notice that I designed them so that students can see the smartboard, me and the class when they face forward. When they face backward, they have a workspace to use. Some students like to sit on the floor and use the low risers as a workspace. 

I went back to Daiso and bought more of those 9x12 plastic document holders for each student. Each doc holder can carry their planner and a pencil, and when the students are facing forward they can use the doc holders as lap desks. They can also take their lap desks outside, to library, in the hall, etc. so that their learning does go with them.

Parents?
Next week are the Student Led Conferences so it will be interesting to see how the parents react.  I intend to use excerpts from this blog on my bulletin board to explain what the thinking is behind the redesign of my classroom.

Design Inspiration

So now I had my theory, but still no plan. I didn't want to just make my classroom homey because of what happened to me before (disaster), so I was searching for design ideas.


MOA
As luck would have it, when I took my family out to the UBC Museum of Anthropology during Spring Break, I got an inspiration. There was this video presentation area that was set up with wide semi-circular steps for people to sit on while they viewed the videos.

I liked how the banks of benches afforded everyone a good view of the screen.  I also liked how the semi-circular shape provided intimacy because it enclosed the space and how most people face each other.  The other intriguing design feature is that it broke the 2-d plane of everyone being on the same level, and headed into the sky also.  I took a picture of the banks of seats on my cell phone so I could remember it for later.

I thought long and hard, okay--obsessed, about it all Spring Break.  I wanted to make a similar set up in my classroom and get rid of as many desks as possible.  I thought that such an arrangement would definitely break the perspective of the traditional classroom.  It reminded me of my friend Darryl's class once.  He had it set up like a simulation of the House of Commons.  I remember the interesting debates he had with his students, and how the arrangement afforded discussion because everyone could see and hear each other.  It seemed to bring the space and the students together (I know, ironic for government).


With every great idea...
So I had my design, but it brought some more big challenges.  First, the MOA benches were not terribly flexible.  If I wanted to use my space for anything else (e.g. dance, art, carpet bowl), I'd be hooped.  Second, though I still have all my fingers, I'm a very mediocre carpenter (think closer to Tim Taylor than Bob Villa).  Having curved banks of seats is really beyond the scope of my capabilities.  Third, what the heck are the students supposed to write on, and where could they keep their stuff?  And last, but not least, what would my fairly new teaching partner, the students, the staff, and the parents make of all this?


Daiso
Let's go with problem 3 first: the writing and storage problem.  As luck would have it, during Spring Break, another one of our family outings was out to Daiso in Richmond.  Daiso is this really wacky Japanese loonie store, (no not a store for crazy Japanese people --though it could be argued-- but a store where the good are imported from Japan, and sell for mostly $2 Canadian).  It is filled with odd household goods, such as eye shades that won't smudge your mascara (for those of you who sleep fully made up), bamboo ear cleaners, magic tricks, erasers in the shape of miniature food, (my daughter's favourite), and lots and lots and lots of extruded plastic.  For a small island country, these people really have a lot of things that are not going to disappear from a landfill any time soon. 


Of this collection of plastic, I saw in the stationery section these see-through 9 X 11 document holders.  As soon as I saw them, I knew I had the answer to my problem about what the kids would write on.  If I bought each student one of these, they could write on them like a lap desk when they sat on the risers.  They could even keep their planners and a pencil and an eraser in the storage compartment.  I hadn't seen anything like them before, and I still haven't seen anything like them since anywhere (including the internet) especially at that price.


I was going to buy 25 of these doc holders right then, but my wife pointed out that it was going to cost me over $50 and that I still hadn't cleared any of this with my teaching partner.  (Man, I hate it when she gets all sensical).  Luckily, one of my wonderful students had given me a gift card to Daiso that would put a major dent in the expenses, but I still ended up getting just one doc holder to try out.  My wife assured me there would be lots if I ever needed to get more if I got the green light from my teaching partner.


Hmmm 2
These doc holders sparked something in me that took this idea to the next step.  I already had the concept that I didn't want my class to look like the factory idea of school, but now having a portable little desk made me think, "Why can't students take their learning with them wherever they go?"  If I really wanted to break down the barrier between school-learning and outside-life, real-world learning, then here was a little symbol of "portable learning." 

Origin

It started out as a joke, but turned into something that is making me think in a new way.

Necessity
It all started when my new teaching partner began in my class. I needed a place that wasn't in my classroom to store a few things because every time I went in to get something, it would really interrupt his teaching. My principal gave me access to room 106 which I share with the Aboriginal Ed program and the reading to dogs program (I'm not kidding). But when I went in there, the space was so uninviting (it is also used for desk storage and paper supplies, etc.) that it depressed me too much to go in there.

So little by little I started decorating it with little odds and ends. With the lights on, it still looks like an ugly classroom/storage space, but with the right lighting, it looks like a very relaxing cafe. I pretty much kept this to myself, but as time went on, more staff members learned about it. Now it's to the point that I can show up at work and find someone in there having coffee by herself, or sometimes and I will spend my spare blocks with someone in there having an espresso. My crowning moment was one Friday at 5:30 there were about 8 of us in there (including a TOC/sub), hanging out, playing music. Did I mention that it was 5:30 on the Friday when Spring Break had already begun almost 3 hours before?

Cafe 106 or "The Space"

This is what it looks like with the full ambience,

(i.e. low mood lighting, jazz playing on the sound system, the smell of espresso brewing, etc.).

 

Just chilling out.

The Hmmm

The whole staff has been through by now, and it has actually toned down a bit, but it made me really think: what is it about our jobs that we need to go into a calm, relaxing place that has virtually no semblance to that job? (Part of my decorating scheme was that I did not include anything that looked like school). Some teachers especially seems to relish the lack of stimulation in my space, and given some of their jobs, it's no wonder.  I know that companies like Electronic Arts put a lot of thought into their workspaces and staff rooms.  They try to make them as inviting and fun as possible so that employees see it as a good place to be.  It can only increase morale and productivity.

The Question

And then over Spring Break, I got to thinking: how could I apply this to kids and the classroom?

Years ago, I met a teacher from an alternate school, and she told me how in her class they didn't have desks, just tables and coffee tables. So that year, I tried to make my class way more homey. I got some coffee tables and some big pillows. It was actually a bit of a disaster. I didn't implement it very well, so the kids treated my classroom as if it WAS their home. They left their stuff all over the place, they laid on the floor and didn't do any work. It was a change just for change sake without any real intention and had failure stamped on it from the start.

This time, I've got an idea, or at least a kernel of an idea. How does classroom atmosphere affect children's learning? My goal is for kids to see that learning happens everywhere, not just in their classrooms or at school, but in their lives outside of school. With that goal in mind, I want to de-institutionalize my classroom. Kids see their classrooms and school as they place they go to learn and then they turn that switch off when they leave because their atmosphere's change the minute they leave school.

So now I had my theory, but still no plan. I didn't want to just make my classrooms homey because of what happened to me before, so I was searching for design ideas.

This is how my project began.

New project

Welcome to my new old blog.

I've left it dormant for a few years because I had nothing I wanted to say. Now I have this new project that I want to record and track my progress.

Thank you for following my (self-indulgent) journey.

Here is my new project:
How does classroom atmosphere affect children's learning?

The theory:
My goal is for kids to see that learning happens everywhere, not just in their classrooms or at school, but in their lives outside of school. With that goal in mind, I want to de-institutionalize my classroom. Kids see their classrooms and school as they place they go to learn and then they turn that switch off when they leave because their atmospheres change the minute they leave school. So my BIG IDEA is: (Learning can happen anywhere, not just school so...) Take your learning with you, wherever you go.

The how:
I don't want my classroom to look like a typical school classroom, but I don't want it to look like home either. I'm looking to get rid of as many desks as possible. I've made a few structures that look like bleachers (we call them "risers"). I designed them so that students can see the smartboard, me and the class when they face forward. When they face backward, they have a workspace to use. I bought these 9x12 plastic document holders for each student. Each doc holder can carry their planner and a pencil and when the students are facing forward they can use the doc holders as lap desks. They can also take their lap desks outside, to library, in the hall, etc. so that their learning does go with them.

I am also going to remove all of my commercial posters, borders, etc. because you don't see those things anywhere but classrooms. If I could afford it, I would replace everything in my classroom with organic materials. I have some ideas about how to reduce the reliance on fluorescent light, and have bought a few things, but the transformation is going to take time and money. I'm already a bit out of pocket, but the cost has forced me to be creative and look for bargains or create things myself.

The reactions:
This has become an odd pet project for me. Other teachers just kind of shake their heads and wonder what the heck I'm doing. I've received zero feedback from parents. When I explained my idea to my students, I got a really interesting reaction. Not jumping up and down excitement. Not fearful opposition. A quiet and thoughtful curiosity with lots of questions helping to refine my vision and their understanding. I've had the risers about a week as I slowly build them, and I think students like the novelty and the freedom. My teaching partner has been a trooper. He is willing to go with the flow.


I have a vague idea of where I'm going next, but I'll have to see which way the wind blows first.