Redesign Your Classroom

A line from the new education documentary “Most Likely to Succeed” raises the question of student’s abilities to make decisions when we don’t allow students to make decisions. School is too often about content, memorizing and recalling, when the real focus should be on raising future adults, future adults capable of making informed decisions.

In the original article (10+ Tips for Using Brain-Based Methods to Redesign Your Classroom) Erin Klein explores brain-based methods for redesigning your classroom. Below is a brief summary.

  1. Layout and Use of Space: are there different spaces within your room that serve different purposes?
  2. Furniture Choices: are there choices of furniture for students, or is all seating uniform in nature?
  3. Color Selections: is your room full of bright colors and busy patterns?
  4. Lighting: what sources of natural light exist in your room? Are there ways to introduce other light sources besides traditional fluorescents?
  5. Nature: is your classroom sterile and free of living organisms?
  6. Environmental Print and Design: are your walls plastered with busy posters? Are they a resource for learning?
  7. Organization of Materials: is your room organized as a workspace for students or a storage area for supplies?

When considering how you might redesign your classroom, why not ask the students? What is their vision of an ideal learning space? More often than not, it’s not what currently exists.

In another article (Campfires in Cyberspace) with a similar message, David Thornburg, Ph.D. suggests that learning takes place “in four spaces, only a few of which are honored in most schools.” These four learning spaces are: 1) campfires (information); 2) watering holes (conversation); 3) caves (concept); and 4) life (context).

What are some ways you might redesign your classroom AND involve students? Imagine the possibilities!

What is a parent to do?

Imagine you are a 5-year-old, entering formal education [kindergarten] for the first time. You have heard 30 million MORE words than your classmate sitting right next to you. How does that increased exposure impact you? How does the lack of exposure impact your classmate?

According to many recent articles, it plays quite a significant role in a child’s future progress in social and emotional skills, along with literacy in all its varied forms. So where do parents fit into this equation? It all depends on the home learning environment. And for too many children in this country, there isn’t an overly positive one, for any number of reasons.

What supports are in place to help parents foster a more positive home learning environment? There are community-based workshops, which may or may not be effective. There are web sites, brochures, and in-home visits, also with minimal impact or real sustainability in producing change. However, change of this type is not uncommon in adults, and other job training programs often show similar results and share similar concerns.

Do parents intentionally shy away from learning how to better impact their children’s lives or improve the home environment? Doubtful. So what is the problem? It may be lack of attention to a particular area, but also a matter of choice, or too many choices. It all seems to boil down to creating a way for parents to navigate the wealth of information to make the best decisions possible.

Educators, beware. Parents aren’t secretly keeping their best kids at home. What can we do to help bridge the gap, and work WITH parents, for the overall benefit of their children?

For more specific information and references to the research, visit the original article – Helping parents help their children

Making It Meaningful.








Teacher Support…It needs to change.

A common message in education these days. . . It needs to change. More specifically, a number of recent articles suggest one area of change should be teacher professionalism. What does this professionalism look like? How does professionalism impact job satisfaction?

To no surprise, one key piece of job satisfaction is teacher support. These practices of support tend to be more beneficial for teachers of students considered as low socioeconomic status. Unfortunately, these are also the teachers that tend to receive the least support.

From an OECD report published in February 2016 (Original Article – OECD: Teacher Professionalism Needs Improvement Worldwide), three areas of teacher professionalism were identified: 1) knowledge base of teaching and best practices; 2) autonomy of teacher’s decision-making abilities; and 3) peer networks for professional learning. As a means to ‘score’ professionalism in these three areas, the average number of best practices was considered. Some key findings included: more pre-service support than in-service support; teachers have more say in selection of course materials versus assessment, content, or discipline; peer networking is often observation rather than collaboration; and primary teachers are more likely than secondary teachers to participate in development.

For the United States specifically, most teachers have participated in teacher education programs. However, just over half are given release time for professional learning, and still fewer participate in research. Control over materials was seen as the area of most autonomy, with far fewer having say in discipline practices or assessments. Most teachers reported receiving feedback from direct observations, while less than half indicated they participated in more collaborative peer networks.

While no specific policy suggestions were made for changing teacher professionalism, the report offered the following recommendations: require pre-service education training; expand mentoring; conduct classroom-based individual or collaborative research; and encourage participation in peer networks.

What are some suggestions you have to help to make the change to support our teachers before and during their careers?

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