Figure 1:
As Cottonwood Classical Preparatory School is mostly a Paiadeia school (we offer the IB Diploma Programme to 11th and 12th graders), our teachers are expected to instruct primarily through projects and shared inquiry discussions. As you can see from my included diagrams, this provides two distinct types of seating arrangement. One is the roughly 75%-of-the-time Project/Didactic setup (Figure 1). In this setup, the teacher is often very mobile. He/she is expected to coach students through projects and perform limited didactic instruction from the front of the room at the SMARTboard or whiteboard. Our school has almost exclusively trapezoidal (trap) tables. Desks in rows are NOT an option! They can be grouped in a hexagonal fashion, and since our average class size is 15, we only need three hexagons to accommodate a full class of students. This is essentially the same as a “cluster” setup. The other room type used is that of the shared inquiry discussion (Figure 2). Teachers arrange the trap tables in a roughly elliptical shape if the class sizes are small enough – if they must, they have been observed creating a messing circular shape out of the trap tables so that everyone can participate in the discussion.
When I walked around to verify that every room is set up in one of these two ways, I was only surprised by the rough percentage of rooms set up each way. Instead of approximately 75% Project/Didactic setups and 25% Shared Inquiry setups, I found about 60% Project/Didactic and 40% Shared Inquiry. It seems as though many of the Humanities instructors keep their room in the Shared Inquiry setup most of the time. After speaking with a few of the Humanities instructors, I found that one of the primary goals of their department this year is to incorporate more Shared Inquiry seminars into the instructional plan. Rearranging the seating in each room is one method they have decided to employ in order to accomplish this goal.
I noticed that the teacher desks (for rooms that have one) were typically across from the main entry door, furthest from the exit; however, I only saw two teachers sitting at these desks out of the 12 rooms I observed. Teachers move around a lot at this school, and the desks are arranged in such a way to accommodate this excessive foot traffic. I observed multiple teachers either sitting with students, or leaned over/squatting at one of the hexagonal tables. There was a lot of cooperative learning going on, with only 3 of the 12 teachers utilizing didactic lecture at the time I walked around the building.
Students with special needs were not always near the doors, even if it seems it would be best for the child to be located in such a position due to physical disabilities. This is one core issue I found for highlighting when I speak to faculty members about seating arrangements. I also found that only 5 of the 12 rooms had one or more computers available for student use. Although we have laptop carts (and single computers) available for checkout, many instructors did not have any available for student use. Also, 6 of the 12 classrooms are equipped with a SMARTboard, but many of them are not adequately set up for use. I will be bringing this up with our facilities manager this week.
I think this information is valuable for staff development in that I could bring them all on a walkthrough of the school and have them create a plus/delta chart for room improvement in each room. This would be beneficial for faculty members and students, and I think a change would occur almost immediately where appropriate. In supervision, I think it’s best to observe as if you are a student – sit where the students sit, work a little as the students do, and get a student view of instruction and purpose for the day’s lesson. This will assist the post-observation discussion, as the supervisor will be better able to focus the constructive comments on student achievement.
