I teach at Holy Redeemer Grade School in Southwest Detroit. It is one of the oldest schools in the city. The building I am in is 116 years old! The age of the building has presented me with some infrastructure issues.

When I entered my room for the first time last year it looked like this.

The front of the room was on the windowed wall opposite me in the photo. My room is 24×40 feet. I rearranged the chairs into a u-shape and kept the front of the room on the longer wall. I added a projector screen and modernized the classroom. I loved this set-up and it worked very well.

In the spring of 2015 however I was gifted with a SMART Board. I was very excited to use this SMART Board but it presented me with some problems. Due to the windows on the longer wall, I was unable to attach the SMART Board to that wall. On the wall where the cross is, there is now power. The only option I had was to place my SMART Board on the western wall and make that the front of the room. My room transformed into this.

Using rows has proved problematic. As Colleen Lee pointed out, this set-up is teacher focused. It tells students that learning can only come from the teacher.Collaborative learning was an afterthought in this set-up. The students are too separated to work effectively together in teams. Another major problem was the lack of space. All of the desks were jammed in tight. I was not able to walk around freely. The last major problem with rows is that this creates a back of the classroom. My children are not easily able to see over each others heads.

For my Learning Space I want to redesign my classroom with three rules in mind. First, my classroom must have an open floor plan.Second, my classroom must not have a designated front and back of the room. Third, my classroom design will tell students that education is an experience that comes from both the teacher and the student. To incorporate these rules, I came up with the following design in SketchUp.

I have placed all of my desks in pods. As Lee points out, this style of design shifts learning from the teacher to a collaboration between teacher and student. To make sure there was no impaired view, I have made the pods slightly off center of each other.

Arranging these pods off center guarantees a good view of the board for each of my students. This new set up has also created far more walking space, making my room appear larger and more open.

As you can see from the above photo, I have also moved my podium. I have made it so there is no defined front of my room. I can guide the kids in instruction from my podium or go through a multi modal lesson on the SMART board. I also use a wireless keyboard and mouse so that I can use the SMART board from anywhere in the room.

SketchUp gave me the design ideas. I went one step further and actually implemented this design into my classroom. The only resources I really needed were the desks and the wireless keyboard and mouse. Since I had all of these materials, this design cost nothing to implement except time.

To implement this successfully, I waited until Friday afternoon. On Fridays, my kids empty their desks and put their stuff in storage for the weekend. As the desks would be empty, this would be a perfect time to move them around. For twenty minutes after school, I moved the desks around to create these seating pods. The picture below was taken after I moved the chairs but before I moved the podium. Admittedly, I did not have that idea until after I began moving things around.

After one week of use, my design has successfully implemented my three rules.The class is more open, learning is more focused on collaboration between teacher and student, and I have eliminated the idea of a front and back of the room. So far the students have responded well to this change. We will see how this goes through the rest of the year.

Resources

Lee, Colleen. (2014).What Your Classroom Setup May Be Saying to Your Students. School Leadership 2.o.