School children reading 1911 (wiki commons)
(No need to go as far back as 1911 to find desks in rows - I just liked the photo.)
A modern classroom with grouped tables (wiki commons)
You know how school visits tend to come all at once, like buses? I've just reached the end of just such a bulge, mostly teaching creative writing. Which has been lovely, exhilarating, exhausting, infuriating and occasionally really depressing. And as a factor in the last two categories, I would like to name-blame-and-shame the way the tables are grouped in classrooms.
I'm fed up with grouped tables because I'm fed up with this emphasis on working in groups. You can do creative writing as a group. Sort of. And grouping the tables the way they almost always are facilitates group learning. Kind of. But I'm really really NOT interested in a story or a poem produced by committee, because I really really AM interested in the stories and poems inside each individual pupil's head. Which are not like the stories or poems in any other individual pupil's head, or any other person's head, now, in the past or in the future. Why can't that fact be acknowledged in the furniture?
Maybe rows of desks aren't the answer, and maybe schools can't afford anything like the Scottish Parliament's wonderful think pods -
- but oh I wish there was some physical way to give our pupils some brain privacy. Or even acknowledge that it might be a good idea.
Just don't get me started on open plan schools ...
Joan Lennon's website.I'm fed up with grouped tables because I'm fed up with this emphasis on working in groups. You can do creative writing as a group. Sort of. And grouping the tables the way they almost always are facilitates group learning. Kind of. But I'm really really NOT interested in a story or a poem produced by committee, because I really really AM interested in the stories and poems inside each individual pupil's head. Which are not like the stories or poems in any other individual pupil's head, or any other person's head, now, in the past or in the future. Why can't that fact be acknowledged in the furniture?
Maybe rows of desks aren't the answer, and maybe schools can't afford anything like the Scottish Parliament's wonderful think pods -
(Sci-Fun website)
- but oh I wish there was some physical way to give our pupils some brain privacy. Or even acknowledge that it might be a good idea.
Just don't get me started on open plan schools ...
Joan Lennon's blog.
Joan Lennon's YA novel Silver Skin website.
