Musings about Classroom Space

My teaching philosophy has engagement as a core principle. I want my students to interact with each other as well as with me. In fact, engagement is encouraged at the university where I teach. However, I've noticed that most of the classrooms where I teach are set up in rows, perfect grids, where all the desks face the front. If the idea of engagement is for students to interact with each other, the row-based classroom set-up seems to work against this. The entire arrangement suggests that students should listen to the teacher as the ultimate authority rather than learning to listen to each other.

I realize that space is at a premium and that many of these rooms need to fit around 40 desks in them, but I wonder where the issue of how classroom space should be organized really lies. Is it with teachers who continue to employ a lecture-based model, is it with a custodial staff who sets up the classroom the way that they remember learning or for ease of cleaning, or is it with administration who wants the classroom space to hold as many students as possible? Or is even some combination of all of these?

When I taught junior high, I experimented with several different arrangements. The double horseshoe (or U-shaped) was nice (two rows of chairs configured into a U-shape where the opening faced the chalkboard--yeah, it was that long ago that we didn't have white boards yet). And our new Classroom Building (CB) has employed this shape for some of the larger lecture rooms with fixed tables and chairs. I also used a modified row system where I divided the room in half and had the rows on the right-side of the room turn to face the ones on the left-side of the room and vice-versa. So it was still rows, but at least students were looking at each other instead of at me.

Now that I teach college, my favorite rooms to teach in are the computer labs in the Liberal Arts (LA) building. This has a single U-shape composed of 6 tables with enough chairs with wheels to seat 20 people. My second favorite rooms are ones with tables (rooms in the library and the Woodbury Business [WB]). Even though the chairs still face the front, at least two, and sometimes three students, have to sit next to each other, so they don't seem as isolated from each other as when they are sitting in their own individual desks. Plus, it seems to be easier for them to work in small groups because they can quickly turn their chairs around to talk to people behind them, if necessary.

When I'm not in those rooms, figuring out how how to adapt the row-based rooms into something that matches my teaching style is always a little difficult. I would love to just move the desks into a circle or a double-horseshoe, pods (small clusters of 4-6 tables), or the divided room where the desks face each other. The issue is how to do any of these arrangements when I change rooms throughout the class day and often have only a few minutes to get to class from a previous class. I shall brainstorm potential solutions in a future blog. For today, I am just struck by the irony of a classroom space that so clearly says "don't engage" at a university that clearly values engagement. One of my goals this semester is to figure out a way to align my classroom space so that it aligns with the value of engagement.

Thinking about Teaching

I read "Our Practice, Our Selves" earlier today. I find P. L. Thomas's ideas about cell phone and computer policies, late work, and developing relationships with students resonating with me as a fellow college instructor. Finding that balance between demanding rigor and realizing that life sometimes interferes with our best intentions (as teachers and as students) is difficult and demanding and sometimes nerve-wracking. Thinking about Pierre Bourdieu's ideas of habitus, I wonder if my time as a junior high teacher has been so embedded in me that it is hard for me to trust myself with a looser classroom structure. At the same time, I have complete confidence that the adult learners are fully capable of handling that looseness if I could just turn the reins over to them more.

Thomas's post is especially timely as I am also reading Maryellen Weimer's book Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice. I want to teach differently and reach my students differently, but I struggle to figure out how to make what I do more accessible to students. The first couple of weeks are the worst as we are figuring each other out--students are trying to figure out what I want, and I'm trying to figure out what they can realistically handle, how hard and fast can I push them to try new ways of thinking and writing. This first month has a steep learning curve for all of us. At the same time, these weeks are the best because they are so full of promise. We haven't had enough assignments for students or me to create preconceptions about what specific students can or can't do yet.

Thomas's ideas are ones that I would like to discuss with my students. The first week of class would be most ideal for those discussions. Is it a stereotype of classrooms, though, to think that we can only have those discussions about what it means to learn, how to handle distractions, and what late work means to me and to students at the beginning of the semester? In some ways, shouldn't we have a discussion about those once we all have figured out what this class could be?

Observation #3: Should the Minimum Wage Be Indexed?

I was listening to the Doug Wright show on my way into work this morning (Thursday, September 4, 2014). He was talking with Melba Sign of the Utah Restaurant Association about a potential increase in the federal minimum wage, particularly as a response to protests that were happening around the country (sit-ins in quick-serve/fast-food restaurants, for instance). Doug implied that minimum wage will increase this year or next, and he was concerned that because it had been so long since the previous minimum wage increase, that the jump would be quite large (between $1-2/hour). He wondered, since because a minimum wage increase tends to happen periodically anyway, if it would be prudent to tie (index) minimum wage increases to some standard. He didn't mention a specific index, but something like the Consumer Price Index could be an example of an index. Not surprisingly, Melba did not seem very fond of any minimum wage increase, but she did say something interesting in response to Doug's idea of indexing--would tying minimum wage to an index allow the minimum wage to go down during recessions? She mentioned that many people not making minimum wage had their wages cut during the recession as businesses tried to re-group.

The discussion about the minimum wage raises a lot of questions for me. I am interested in the idea of indexing the minimum wage. I wonder, as Doug, does whether indexing minimum wage increases would make them less painful when they do go up. Is a 25-cent increase once a year better or worse than a $1.00 increase in four years--the net effect would be similar in some ways, perhaps?

Doug and Melba also discussed the difference between the minimum wage and a living wage. I often hear the two discussed together, but Doug and Melba agreed that they are different. In fact, they tended to use "minimum wage" as a synonym for "entry-level wage." This made me wonder why the terms "minimum wage" and "living wage" often appear together, how they are different, and when they might apply to the same person and when not.

I also wonder how the minimum wage affects workers and businesses, both in general and when it increases. While the perception is that it tends to positively affect workers and negatively affect businesses, I wonder if that is true more generally. What about specifically? Are some specific types of workers worse off when a minimum wage increase occurs? Are some types of businesses better off when the minimum wage increases? Again, it seems like the details could provide more richness for discussion than general trends.


Doug mentioned that the whole minimum wage issue is complex, and I definitely  agree. I wonder what others think about the idea of a minimum wage. What would wages for food-industry workers be without a minimum wage? Would the market dictate a rate that is similar to the minimum wage now? What models could predict the impact of an economic system with or without a minimum wage?

I also wonder if the economic system is the kind of chaotic system that Stellan Ohlsson talks about in his book Deep Learning: How the Mind Overrides Experience. He says that it is difficult-to-impossible to make predictions about chaotic systems. (A river is a natural phenomenon that is chaotic because the way it develops over time is unpredictable.) He says that change is inevitable in chaotic systems and that the change is irreversible. So even though I am asking about a system without the minimum wage, I don't think our society could actually implement that because the system has been built with that as a core component of the system. In other words, it seems like the system would not react in the same way if the minimum wage were to be taken away as it would react had the minimum wage never been in place.

Observation #2: Considering Student Attendance Patterns

I have noticed that some students do not come to class during the first week of school. Some never show up while others begin coming after 5-6 class days have passed. I wonder why this occurs. In the case of students who never come, I wonder why they would sign up and pay for a class and not attend. It seems like a waste of money to me, but I wonder if something else is going on. Of course, students might be in the wrong class, but even then, I wonder why the student and/or the teacher does not notice why the student is not appearing on the roll. I have also heard that a student can still receive financial aid for failing a class. I wonder if sometimes people sign up for classes that they have no intention of taking so that they can have enough credits to qualify for financial aid. I have had other students tell me that they didn't think that they could attend class while they were waiting for their financial aid to come in. Unfortunately, by the time the financial aid does arrive in students' accounts, if those students have not been missing class, they have missed so much class that they are now so far behind that it seems overwhelming to try and catch up.

Other students begin coming and seem consistent for the first couple of days, but have sporadic attendance after the first week and then stop coming altogether by around midterm.This pattern is more troublesome for me as a teacher. In the first case (a student that never comes or displays a sporadic attendance pattern from the beginning), I can assume that I, as the teacher, am probably not the cause. However, in the case of a student who comes and then suddenly stops, it feels like there is likely a problem with the class--whether that is confusion on the subject matter, a conflict with the teacher, a conflict with another student in class--that is causing the changed attendance pattern. Of course, general stress from other sources could be equally to blame. I also wonder if some students are just not aware of how importance attendance in class can be.

I just wonder if there were a way to study student attendance patterns and determine from the patterns warning signs of impending problems. I also wonder if there is a way to teach students the importance of attendance in a way that doesn't feel like preaching (or preaching to the choir, since if anything is said in class about attendance, generally the people who need to hear it might be missing that day). And while I don't want to know students' financial history, I wonder if the financial aid office is aware that some students may think that they are not allowed to attend class while they are waiting for financial aid to fund.

My point in my observation is that it seems like if we understood more about why students do not come to class, we could provide information and/or interventions that would encourage more students to come to class, get them out of the wrong classes earlier (opening up space for waitlisted students), and recognize problems before students were so far behind that they couldn't catch up. I personally would rather work with students than see a faceless name on a roll for a semester.

Observation Activity #1

Today, I read an article from the print edition of Sunday's (August 24, 2014) Deseret News titled "What Kind of Prison Might the Inmates Design?" by Lee Romney.  The article describes how inmates at San Francisco's County Jail No. 5 worked with Deanna VanBuren, an architect, and Barb Toews, an academic and fellow workshop leader, to create schematics of a jail/prison that would help them be accountable for the crimes that they had committed and heal themselves and their victims. It is based on the concept of restorative justice which I have only heard a little about. However, the idea intrigues me because it focuses more on helping inmates change than on exacting retribution for crimes committed. The article mentions that the idea of restorative justice is controversial, in part because the same crime could receive widely different treatments.

Recently, I have been interested in the punitiveness not only of the criminal justice system but of society on those who go through the system and then are released after paying fines and/or doing jail time. It seems like it is very difficult for those people to get jobs and integrate back into society. I wonder how a restorative justice model might deal with the issue of reintegrating former criminals into society. Romney notes in his article that more and more people are realizing that the traditional criminal justice system has a poor track record of preventing recidivism. So one of my question is how effective is restorative justice at reducing recidivism rates among former inmates? how does a restorative justice model compare to a traditional criminal justice model?

The question that Toews posed at the end of the article is only one of the questions that I think is worth exploring. She asks, "If we treated it as a potential for something literal, if the environment were different, how might that change how we do justice?" I'm not sure what Toews means by it, but she might mean justice or even the space that the inmates that she worked with created.

Additional questions include what exactly is restorative justice? how would society have to change to accept a restorative justice model? what does the general population know about restorative justice? how does the general population feel about restorative justice compared to the traditional criminal justice system?