Part of my Master's training at the University of Alaska Anchorage included a study of classroom environments and how they impact learning. My research included work done by Burke, Kenreich, & Lackney, the most interesting by Kenreich, who was looking at the success of public libraries for use by adults. As it turns out, we have difficulty learning and working when we are not comfortable. And, according to educational researchers, this is especially true for young people.
So why, then, would we ever attempt to teach children in a room resembling the one on the right?
The primary answer is compliance. If we line students up in hard desks, we can more easily monitor and manage their behavior while we lecture at them from the front of the room or they fill out worksheets and composition books.
Compliance was once the favored "soft skill" when the public education system sought to enculturate immigrant children into productive factory workers in the 1800's. In the 21st Century, however, even the U.S. Department of Labor recognizes that compliance isn't the key to anyone's success. Tony Wagner, a teacher, researcher, and philosopher, has discussed his 7 Survival Skills of the 21st Century in video & text, and John Spencer, another great thinker in education, does a wonderful job explaining how we want to move from student compliance to empowerment.
As a veteran substitute teacher, I can vouch for the attraction of compliance. In a room filled with 27 unknown children, from kindergartners to teenagers, comfort comes well after safety, productivity, and whether or not the administrator is going to raise their eyebrows as they walk by the classroom. As a classroom teacher, however, responsible for the long-term learning & success of her students, dependent on positive relationships and rapport, and more interested in fostering creativity and intellectual inquiry than having to focus on managing behaviors, I want my students to be happy and comfortable in a positive and stimulating environment.
"Flexible" or "cafe" seating has, in the last decade, entered into the conversation as a method of promoting student learning. Reading nooks and class libraries have been around since at least the 80's, when I was in grade school, but now, as we shift to a Personalized Learning paradigm, we are deliberately designing our classrooms with the comfort and happiness of the student in mind. My co-teacher, a SPED specialist, educational innovator, and BP Teacher of the Year, Robanne Stading, was excited to be "all in" changing up my already somewhat flexibly arranged classroom into the "Starbucks Room."
Rest assured, my students will not have free access to caffeine and sugar in my classroom. My progressive soul just threw itself under an out-of-control school bus at the thought. My students will, however, have access to a plush easy chair, a couch, yoga cushions around low coffee tables, tall cafe tables at which to perch on stools or stand, and, because I'm just cool like that, a scattering of "traditional" school desks, tables, & chairs.
Research has shown that flexible seating and a comfortable environment increases student engagement and learning. In our "Secondary Learning Complex" (a term coined by Mrs. Stading), students will have a choice of my "Starbucks Room," the quieter "Learning Lab" next door, a computer lab, our library, the science room, & some reading/work spaces in the hallways. While formal classes still meet at specific times in specific classrooms, students are most often engaged in independent work, either individually or in groups, and research has shown that, in order to promote that independence, they need choice of space.
I am constantly striving to improve my practice as an educator and I anticipate many iterations and much evolution in my methodology and classroom in the coming years. I look forward to working with my students in the 2018/19 school year in making our Starbucks Room the place to be and learn.