A Tale of Four Classrooms

As I walked through the hallway, I glanced into a classroom.  Students were sitting in rows, blurry eyed.  No one had books or paper out.  No one was taking notes.  Honestly, no one was doing anything.  The instructor was standing behind the computer podium talking.  Students were nodding off.

The next classroom looked like a behive.  Students were in small groups conversing, standing up writing on white boards, examining and critiquing each others work.  Periodically, attention would focus on the instructor, who was moving about from group to group.  A whole class discussion would briefly occur, then students would go back to interacting with their groups.  Toward the end of the class, the groups were rotating around the classroom, taking notes off the whiteboards that other groups had created.

In a third classroom, the instructor had moved the tables in a large rectangle.  Students were sitting around the table, interacting with each other in a "popcorn" fashion.  A few raised their hands, but most of all the students spoke up when they had something to say, while still being respectful of the group.  And their was a lot being said.  It was difficult to tell exactly who the instructor was--the students seemed to be instructing each other.

No one, except the professor, was in the last classroom,  although books and backpacks littered the place.  Come to find out that the students were in a different building examining a set of posters for which they were assigned questions.  After a while, teams of two students trickled in, each set of partners conversing rapidly about their discoveries.  When everyone returned, they went over the questions and shared their answers together.

"We've been conditioned to sit in rows, look at the back of peoples' heads, not turn around, to sit quietly, not talk and not think," a student told me this week.  No wonder discussion can be difficult: Education is not "supposed" to involve the free, energetic and some chaotic exchange of ideas (at least not in the minds of many of our students).

But they really do want to discuss.  They want to try out ideas.  They want to be challenged.  But both the physical set up of most of our classrooms and many of our pedagogical techniques are not very conducive to creating curious, expressive and excited scholars.  And WE need to break out of the "passive learning" mold.  If you need some inspiration and instruction, head over the the Family Enrichment Center next to Building 1.  They'll be glad to let you look through the glass as those preschoolers "learn."  Look at how their classrooms are set up.  Observe the interaction between teacher and student, and student-to-student.  We could learn a few lessons.

I smile to myself each time I see the signs posted our classrooms, "It is COLLEGE POLICY to return the furniture to its original arrangement."  As if "the original arrangement" is some kind of "sacred seating," and also the best arrangment for learning.  For one, it's NOT "college policy" (though it may be the "preferred procedure").  And secondly, it's probably not even good pedagogy.  But it IS great for dulling the mind.