gests that “if he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much
more!” (p. 12).
If this kind of classroom was a thing of past, it would be bad enough. Sadly however,
many of us have witnessed, or experienced as students, schools in which teachers still use
these approaches to teaching, where boredom and humiliation are wielded as weapons to
keep students in line.
As a new teacher you have to decide on the kind of classroom you want to have, a deci-
sion that reflects your broader philosophy of teaching, standards established by your
school or district, what your students are accustomed to from earlier experiences, what you
have planned, and the materials you have to work with. Generally, I favor a flexible ap-
proach to organizing the classroom. I prefer moveable chairs with arms, but if I have to, I can
adjust to tables and even fixed row seating. Even when I use cooperative learning with a
class, I usually start every lesson with the room organized into rows. It makes it easier for
me to perform clerical tasks (e.g., take attendance, check homework) and for students to get
started with the lesson. From there, we switch the room around depending on what we are
going to do that day. Students can work individually or with a partner in the next row, or
four chairs can be made into a pinwheel that allows student cooperative learning teams to
work together. If there is a student or teacher presentation, if we are watching a video, or if
something needs to be copied off the board, we can keep the desks in rows. For a full-class
discussion, in a large enough room, we “circle up.”
I decorate rooms with colorful subject-appropriate posters, student work, and plants.
Once we had a class parakeet named Thomas Jefferson, whose cage was lined with photo-
copies of a picture of Jefferson’s archenemy, Alexander Hamilton. When possible, I got free
posters from airlines, video stores, book publishers, and at teacher conferences. When nec-
essary, I bought them. I had to live in these rooms a large part of my day, so I wanted them
to look and feel welcoming. One year, my room was so decrepit that I enlisted a group of stu-
dents and we painted it. Steve Marlowe, a mentor teacher in the New Teachers Network, has
a room full of hanging plants and plays music as students enter his class.
Other ideas for organizing the classroom to help achieve your educational goals (assum-
ing you are not committed to the Gradgrind approach) and to convince students you know
what you are doing include the following:
·Come in early in the morning and put greetings and instructions for each of your classes
on the board. This makes it possible to greet students at the door at the start of the period. If
you share a room with another teacher, you can arrange to use a side board and cover assign-
ments with a roll-down map or a poster. If you are a “traveling man (or woman),” put notices
on poster paper. Avoid using the overhead projector at the start of a period before the class is
set up. If you turn out the lights, you invite trouble.
·Seating arrangements are important. Most students like to have their own designated
space. When you do not assign seats there is sorting at the start of every period. Bullies grab
the prime spots (e.g., in the back, next to a talkative, attractive, or flirtatious person). It is
harder for you to learn student names and there is a general sense of disorder. On the first day
of class I assign students to seats alphabetically and then we shift around a little so that a 6-
foot 4, 250-pound football player is not squeezed into a chair in the front, blocking everyone
behind him, and so that everyone can see and hear. I also inform students of three procedural
rules. First, “I take attendance from the seat, so if the seat is empty, you are marked absent.”
Second, “I do not like empty seats in the front. If you are absent a lot, I will move other people
up.” Third, “There is no such thing as a permanent seat. If there are problems, someone may
have to move so we can all work more effectively. We will also change some seating assign-
ments once we form cooperative learning teams.” Many new teachers seat “disruptive chil-
ORGANIZATION 131