I think it’s interesting to compare what schools can be with
my experience with schools. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time at four
schools- the one where I attended high school, the one where I did my senioryear field work, the one where I interned, and the one where I currently teach.
The size and makeup of the student bodies at the schools and the communities
they’re located in vary quite a bit, but the buildings themselves and the
courses offered and required for graduation are strikingly similar. I found
this week’s coursework about a green school, the Finnish school system, teacher
and student communities in schools (and extending beyond schools), and Dewey’s
ideas of what schools can be interesting but unfamiliar. Why is it that so many
diverse options about what schools can look like and how they can be organized
and run exist but so little diversity exists in our schools? I know that there
are certainly exceptions to my experience with schools, but I think that the
vast majority of schools are similar to the one’s I’ve worked at.
William Ayers offers a different view of the classroom,
perhaps similar to Dewey’s, or John Hardy’s, challenging the concept of
classrooms full of rows of desks. I enjoyed the quote in chapter two of Dewey’s
(1915/2001) The School and Society in
response to his difficulty in finding what he considered to be suitable desks
for his school: “I am afraid we have not what you want. You want something at
which the children may work; these are all for listening” (21). Most classrooms
within my sphere of experience are arranged exactly for that purpose- students
in rows facing the board, encouraging the type of learning most commonly
engaged in in our schools- the attempted transfer of information from the
teacher to the student, with little room for collaboration or student input on
the learning. My classroom is set up a little differently I have rows of desks
in three sections making a u-shape with a large open space in the center. The
front/ board is still the center of the room, but it allows for a little more
interaction across the classroom, as students are facing each other, and the
center of the room being open facilitates activities that require students to
move around the room as well as allowing a “stage” of sorts for student
performances. For the most part, teachers are forced to do what they can with
the space and furniture they’re supplied with by the school. If any more
students had been added to my classes last year, I would have been forced to
fill in the open center to accommodate them. One thing Ayers did to open space
in his classroom is to eliminate the teacher’s desk. That would create a
considerable amount of space, but would leave me with nowhere to do the
planning/ grading work that I spend so much time doing at my desk! Even brand
new schools that I’ve toured have all had generally the same use of physical
space- desks, tables, etc. Wouldn’t it be different (and incredible) if schools
were designed with student learning in mind! John Hardy mentions in his description
of the green school he build in Bali that his former school was designed by the
same person and built out of the same materials as the prison and the insane
asylum- is that the best we can do?!
I’m also intrigued by the different ways schools can be
structured to better foster real learning. I’m particularly interested in the
benefits of teacher and student groups staying together for extended periods of
time, as they do in the Finnish school system and the HiPlaces model. My
concern with this is that I’ve had some classes that I don’t think would have
benefited anyone to stay together. I know it would require more work, but I
think careful consideration of which students have classes together would make
the time spent in class more productive. For example, I had 40% of my
discipline problems in one class last year. (That’s exact, I’m analyzing the
data for my inquiry project.) Part of this was because of the makeup of the
class, there were several students involved in opposing gangs. I was new to the
school and the area and had no idea what was going on, but when I asked a
colleague to observe the class and offer feedback she picked up on that
immediately. When I discussed the problems I was having with my principal, she
asked to see my class list, and her initial response, after hardly a glance
was, “these kids never should have been in a class together.” (That’s an issue
of itself- if our school were set up with teams and communities as in the
HiPlaces model, would it eliminate some of that tension? Or would that not work
because of the issues in the community where I teach?) If she could identify
that so easily, how much extra work would it take to review class lists and try
to prevent situations like that from happening in the future, at least for the
newest and least experienced teachers? I’m not the only one with a situation
like this, another new teacher at my school struggled so much with one
particular group of students that his mentor described it as if someone had
intentionally grouped all of the students with known behavior issues in one
class. I suppose in a model like HiPlaces the selection of students for the
different teams is more carefully thought out than the scheduling at my school
seems to be.
I don’t mean to sound too negative here, I’m glad to learn
about the ingenuity being employed in schools worldwide, and excited about the
possibilities that they offer the many schools that are still structured like
the one I attended or the one where I work now.
2 comments:
Your insight into classroom organization and desk space is similar to my views on it. I have seen the U-shaped desk arrangement before and love it! I wanted to bring something up with my own experience that I thought was interesting. At my school, the principal requires that all desks be in rows and separated from one another, much like how Dewey described. After the first semester we may group desks however we please. I find this interesting because the first 2 months of school is when we want to engage communication and cooperation between students. This is the crucial time when students need to build relationships with one another and work together to solve problems. I know that my principal does this to help with classroom management in the beginning of the year, but after reading this week’s readings I can’t help but feel that this is the opposite of what we should be doing. I know that John Dewey would feel the same. I also had another thought on Dewey’s ideas regarding classroom set-up. I have the smallest room in the building, and with twenty-some 6 year olds, its really tough! There is very little room for students to move around in groups. If you’ve worked with young kids, you know that they need to be up and active in the classroom. My room makes this very difficult. We are also unable to go outside due to the dangerous neighborhood (I talk more about this in my post). What are teachers supposed to do when resources are limited?
In response to your thoughts on keeping students together through grades, I have first hand experience. I attended elementary school in Austria from first grade through third grade. I had the same class, and same teacher all three years, and I loved it! The relationship you build with your classmates and teacher is unlike any relationship that would be built in only a years time. I really believe this is why schools abroad are so different than American schools. The teachers can really learn about every child’s strengths and weaknesses. They do not need to spend time in the beginning of each year to determine what level each student is on, because they already know from last year. Yes, it would be difficult if you had a classroom full of discipline problems, however I think with time spent together this would disappear. I know this is a bad connection but it reminds me of the film, Freedom Writers. What grade do you teach? I was unable to open the link to HiPlaces, but it sounds really interesting! How do they group students into classes?
Hi Lisa,
Thanks for your post! I didn't think you sounded negative at all--rather, I thought you raised an extremely important question.
So I put it back to you--why DO almost all of our schools look the same, when there are obviously so many ways we could do it?
I can at least say I think this is something deeply cultural--parents and community members expect schools to look this way. They expect desks and rows. They expect the "egg-crate" model of separated classrooms not interacting. Changing it upsets people.
This reminds me of an interesting study from the late 1930s. It's called, unoriginally, the 8-Year Study.
A big research team got all the universities in the country to wave standard entry requirements for students from some number of schools (say 30, I can't remember off the top of my head). These schools were told they were free to invent any sort of curriculum or organization they wanted.
The students in these schools were compared to a control group. (Their test scores/gpas were the same, but the experimental schools produced better "intangibles"--extra curriculum involvement, leadership, etc.)
My point here though is how hard these experimental schools struggled to break free from the mold, even when all the pressure was taken off.
Clearly, it is a great point worth thinking about.
In terms of your own current school, I think it is a simple, wonderful idea to require that someone look over class lists to ensure that no obvious personality conflicts or imbalance in terms of abilities. And I agree, we should take that further, and get more thoughtful about how assign students to classes.
As teachers, we know we need to use knowledge of the child in light of the task to achieve, when we assign groups. Why wouldn't we do that when we assign classes?
And I agree with Liz on the notion that one teacher with a group for many years is preferable--yes, there is the potential for some bad cases. But I think one reason we don't "loop" with the same class is that the public doesn't trust teachers--they want to limit the damage from any bad apples rather than maximize the good!
Thanks again for your work. You raise some really important points!
Kyle
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