Classroom Management: Room Arrangement

Ideally, I would meet my students in a spacious, clean, well-lit room with temperature control and ergonomic, comfortable desks and chairs that can be easily rearranged. I remember how difficult it was to concentrate when the room was too dark, I couldn't move my elbows without bumping into someone else, or I had a backache from twisting around in an undersized desk-chair unit.

A clock at the front of the room would be easily visible from all vantage points--I find it disingenuous when teachers attempt to "hide" to time as someone inevitably has a watch anyway--and a whiteboard for both teacher and students to use when explaining or asking something of the class. Mathematics can be hard to discuss without some form of visual representation. Another, smaller whiteboard at the side or back of the room would have the day's agenda(s) prewritten for students to refer to. Posters of mathematicians of all flavors, mathematical discoveries and art from many cultures, a brainteaser of the week, and past students' work would appear on the walls, and be rotated regularly to stimulate student interest. Students would be welcome, of course, to bring in their own contributions to the walls.

In a corner I would keep extra pencils and any stray writing utensils left behind; an ongoing binder of daily assignments and agendas, which I saw in a middle school classroom once; materials such as compasses, calculators, markers or paper; and a collection of books: brainteasers, tomes on the history of math, biographies of mathematicians, mathematical art, origami and tessellations, statistics in politics and sports, mathematics in computer science, Abbott's Flatland,, and more. Other items of interest, such as a nautilus shell (to illustrate the occurrence of Fibonacci's sequence in nature) and board games (to illustrate mathematical strategizing and unconventional coordinate systems), might find their way here as appropriate. Here students could find whatever materials it occurred to them to use, and glance through other, sometimes startling, uses of math.

At the back, I would like to have a few (locally) networked computers so students have the opportunity to explore math interactively using software such as Geometer's Sketchpad. This might be a good way to allow students to make use of other resources I could provide: webpages on related topics or depictions of functions, hypercubes, and other esoterica. A set of scientific and/or graphing calculators for classroom use would also be handy for computational necessities. While I learned to find square roots by algorithmic approximation or by looking them up in a table, I imagine this would not be a wonderful use of time.

Students' seats would initially be arranged in groups of four in such a way that they could easily turn to look at the walls or whiteboards, with enough space between groups for people to navigate through the room. Groups would be shuffled regularly so students would have the opportunity to get to know each other, but they would sometimes be able to choose their own groups or partners. Groupwork will occur regularly so students learn to share their thoughts with each other and learn to consider mathematical knowledge as something they can achieve, not something for which the teacher is the sole arbiter of truth, which happens far too often in a traditional math classroom.

My own desk would be tucked aay in a corner, as I anticipate spending almost no time there during class. My modus operandi is to circulate constantly around the room or find an empty seat near some students so I know what they are doing and am on hand to help resolve any urgent issues. I could use, however, use the desk as an administrative area for keeping my own files and papers, or entering grades on the computer.

Copyright © 2002 Yoon Ha Lee <requiescat@cityofveils.com>
Last updated on 20 May 2002