Way back in
the 70’s when I began my teaching career, I was given a co- teaching post with
a mature and very experienced teacher. We held our classes in a brand new space
with no walls, very little furniture and we shared it with other students and
teachers. This was the new “open plan” concept where everyone would magically
mix and match. This was a real recipe
for disaster with frustrated teachers, students being loud trying to be heard
and a nightmare for everyone. I survived the year, my co-teacher retired Within
that year, the walls went back up, desks came back, there was no more team
teaching and I was given my own class and classroom. This new open plan idea was wonderful but without training, planning,
preparation and drastic changes in teaching styles, this could never work.
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| Walls were taken down. |
This new
school year began like that once again for me …walls were taken down, new
spaces were created, new rooms developed and multi purpose furniture put in
place.
This time however I was
prepared, along with my colleagues and middle school students. We had just
spent a year brainstorming, researching, discussing, talking and talking again
- with designers, with planners, with each other, in teams and with the
students to make sure that we were all being heard and that this new adventure was
going to work for everyone involved. We finally decided on a huge multi purpose
Da Vinci Room, two regular classrooms, two seminar rooms and a wonderful open
learning commons space. We were ready, prepared and excited to begin our year
without set classrooms, more team teaching and integrated studies planned, and
more student led learning.
How has it worked?
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| Finished in time... |
We all love
the openness of the space. It is bright, light, clean and inviting. The space was
a bit noisy for a while, as we literally had no doors – which were coming all
the way from China and took a while to arrive. Most learning was fine but
showing a movie or having a quiet discussion took some creative thinking.
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| Students first reactions |
Once
the glass doors were installed, we all found our way and things began to
happen. Students spilled into the LC and classes were sharing, talking and
learning alongside each other. It seemed natural to begin to work
collaboratively with other teachers and mix up the grades. My first combined
project was with the 7th grade English class. It was certainly an
authentic, real life problem that needed solving. We called it Food Detectives
and decided to read Chew on This by Eric Schlosser. What do we eat? How do we educate
our division, our school and the community? All questions the students tried to
answer through a wiki that we will revisit in the spring and continue to make
changes in the way we think about fast food. Teachers are now planning some
more collaborative projects for the next trimester and I think this trend will just
continue to expand.
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| Doors installed |
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| Students using the learning Commons |
Why is this
working today and not in the 70’s?
Back then, memorizing facts and filling students minds with information
which was the regurgitated back, was what we called education…thankfully we
have moved on since then. Our middle school is a 1-I laptop division where
teachers love to ingrate technology, give over much of the planning and teaching
to students and where we regularly communicate globally with other teachers and
students around the world. The mind set has certainly changed and education is
a wonderful profession to be in today.
