Borderland

The rooms in our new school are fabulous. They’re clean and bright. We have lots of drops for fast internet connections all over. There’s even a port to plug in a computer to a LCD projector and a sound system that has a circular array of speakers in the ceiling. Right now I’m listing to KUAC, the local Fairbanks public radio station, which has great Saturday programming. You can listen to it, too, because they stream their programming. I’m getting ready for kids to walk through the door in 5 days. Still have a lot of work to do to get organized.

The classrooms are a bit smaller than the ones we had in our old building, which was built to hold classes of 40 elementary-aged kids in the 1950’s. We’re supposed to anticipate groups of about 25, I’m told. I have 6 computers in the room. They need tables. If I put 25 desks in the room, too, that would leave little space for anyone to move around. So I’m trying an experiment. (Every year I try new things.) I decided that I would create the space I need by not giving the kids desks. Kindergarten teachers and a few elementary teachers have done this. I rounded up a bunch of small tables, and I’m going to sit 3 kids to a table. That leaves a lot of empty floor space for them to spread out when they don’t need to be seated. We’re going to have communal supplies, and their personal stuff will go into little individual cubbies near the coats. It’s going to take some getting used-to, I think.

The big question here is whether this arrangement will encourage more *productive* collaboration among the kids. They may see it as a free-for-all. My goal is to teach more small group lessons, and to keep the kids busy on projects. If I gave them desks, I’m afraid that there would be no room left for them to do anything but sit at a desk. I’ll give each of them a clipboard to work on the floor if they want to. This way we can have meetings and groups working on different things throughout the day. And (the best part) they have nowhere to lose their homework, pencils, scissors, books, notes home, etc. It should feel freer to them once they get over the shock of not having a nametag on a desktop. I hope I can work out the various management issues because it feels like the kind of classroom I’ve wanted to set up for a long time now.

One thing I know for sure, it’s a lot easier to do this job before the kids show up.