Designing the Perfect Classroom
The design of the classroom can be one of the most important aspects of any classroom. The design is what sets the tone at the beginning of the year. It’s more like setting a first impression with your students. As the teacher we have the opportunity to design our classrooms to optimize student learning. We can choose to make our classroom traditional, or we can choose to make our classroom modern and let our students embrace our classroom and the learning that is about to take place. In a perfect world, my classroom would have a variety of seating options where students could make their choice on what would best suit their learning. Unfortunately we do not live in a perfect world, so the classroom design comes down to the teacher and what he or she feels is best for the classroom.
Right now I try to shift the desks in my classroom as much as possible. Kayla Delzer of edutopia.com also agrees in the shifting and arranging of the classroom in multiple ways and the benefits that it can give to students. I want my students to have variety in their lives when it comes to how they sit in my classroom. I wish that I could have more than just desks in my room, but that isn’t possible for me at the moment so I have to work with what I have in order to make my classroom as conducive as possible for learning. I try to let my students have as much control as they can (which sometimes isn’t much for seventh graders) because I think that by empowering them in the design of the room will lead to better buy-in and in turn better motivation to do well in my room. The more I give my classroom to my students, the more work they will do for me. I always tell my students that this is their class and that I’m only here to help them get the most of it.
Finally, I think that design in the classroom is a great way to manage the class. I like to have lots of lanes to walk in and around in my classroom. I am a very vocal and very active teacher and try to get my students out of their desks as often as possible. I think that providing many walkways in my classroom allows me to manage the students in my class through proximity. Proximity is one of the best ways that I’ve found to manage the classroom as it provides me many different options to handle issues with students. “Natural teachers instinctively work the crowd. They use proximity as an instrument of management. They know that either you work the crowd, or the crowd works you.” says Dr. Fred Jones. This is just one of the many important reasons that classroom design is as important as it is.
