My Way

This week we analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of open office spaces and cubicle office spaces.  What I found most interesting is how much personal preference factors in to how we view each type of space.  I really enjoyed reading people's comments on the class discussions and seeing how much of our personalities came out in our analyses. While I am a very social person, I tend to prefer working in private, small spaces if I need to get something done.  I do not like any noise at all, not music, not the hum of people talking, nothing.  I know others who work best when they are listening to music or when they have the opportunity to work with others.  I have noticed that teachers typically run their classrooms in the way in which they themselves best function.  If they work better as individuals, they tend to have a lot of independent work in their classrooms.  If they work best in silence, they tend to keep on task time very quiet.  If they work better with others, group work is typically highlighted.  If they work best with noise, there is a hum of student chatter or possibly music being played.  

One of our biggest challenges as educators is branching out and understanding that our way is not the only way.  The way we see things may not be the only way to see things.  The way we learn is not the only way people learn.  We must constantly seek to diversify the way we do things in our classrooms and not fall into a rut of "my way or the highway."

Retail Space Comparison

Tara's Presentation

Please click on the above link to watch my presentation.

Space, Light, Order

My high school experience took place in a one-story building that was spread over a large area and accommodated 1200 students each day.  Most of the classrooms were on the “inside” hallways of the building and were like little caves.  No windows.  White cement block walls.  Artificial lighting.  Recycled air.  Who designed this place and thought it would be a good place for student learning?  It was a fairly modern building.  I believe that the building was built in the late 60’s or early 70’s.  But even as a 15-year-old high school student, I thought it strange to have a building with classrooms closed in like that.  The few classes during the day that took place in the classrooms lucky enough to have windows were like a breath of fresh air, literally.  I have to ask myself, if correct use of space, light, and order can make a house more like home, what effect can they have on a learning environment?  Could it be that the way in which we arrange the desks, the lighting we choose, the way we use the windows, the colors we choose for the walls, and other things could have an effect on student learning?  Or maybe it simply affects the way a student feels walking into the environment we create in our classrooms.  Obviously, we are limited, in a way, to what is already there.  My teachers in my high school didn’t build the building and choose their classrooms with no windows.  It’s simply the hand they got dealt.  

I was fortunate enough to teach for 4 years in a very small private school in Lansing.  During that time, we were granted permission to do just about whatever we wanted with our classrooms.  My first year teaching, I just moved in my few belongings.  I didn’t have time to make any massive changes.  But, what stood out to me the most when I moved in was the color of the walls – pink.  And the trim work and bookshelves were a darker pink.  I hated it.  Immediately.  I’m biased.  I don’t like pink, but it was almost overwhelming.  I started putting together plans to change that for the next school year. 

During the summer after my first year teaching, a mother of one of my students and I painted the room a very light blue color.  The trim work and the bookshelves we painted slightly darker blue.  I bought an a blue area rug, some blue and white lawn chairs, and a modern floor lamp and created a reading corner.  I switched out the chalkboard for a 12-foot magnetic white board.  I decorated the bulletin boards with a sea/beach theme.  I noticed that my class dynamics changed.  I am sure that the design of the space, the color change, the decorations, etc. actually changed how my class acted.  You might say that the students were different, and that’s what created the change.  But I taught in a multi-grade classroom in which the majority of my students stayed the same.  One year later, the whole school changed from pink to blue.  

Clearly we have to work with what we have available.   But I think the way we use light, order, and space in our classrooms can actually have a real effect on our students’ learning experiences at school.

Director's Commentary

Click here for Tara's Video

I spent the majority of the last six years of my life teaching at a secondary boarding school in the middle of the jungle of northeastern Bolivia.  We started out with no running water and no electricity on our campus.  Our home didn’t even have a floor, windows, or doors.  Life was relatively slow.  We washed our laundry and our dishes in the river, cooked in the communal kitchen, and ate, played games, and read books by candlelight in the evenings when the sun went down. We didn’t carry cell phones because there wasn’t any signal.  We didn’t use computers unless we charged up our laptop in town to watch a movie at the school.  Life was slow. And connected.

During these same years, technology in the United States continued to change drastically.  When we left in 2005, flip phones were in, texting was not.  Internet was something you had on your computer, unless you were one of the techie few who had the newest products with the latest technology.  Now, netbooks, smartphones, and tablets are the “norm” for many people.  We carry the internet at our fingertips all the time.  We can email, post to Facebook, follow our people on Twitter, check our flights, Skype our friends overseas, text our contacts, take photos, record videos, get the latest news, check the current weather and the forecast, identify our exact GPS coordinates, and so much more just by pulling out our cell phone, that thing we used to use only to call people.  

When I returned to the States recently, I noticed that just about everyone I see carries a smartphone.  Admittedly, I also have a smartphone and use it all the time for almost everything except calling people.  I have a laptop that I am using in some form or another throughout most of the day.  I am connected, just like everyone else I know.  

One Saturday afternoon after lunch with some friends, I looked up from my computer and noticed that all nine adults in the room were using their computers, tablets, or smartphones.  We continued to talk a little and socialize a bit while everyone was glancing at their devices more than just periodically.  A few days later, as I talked with one of my friends, I noticed that she was texting and only half-listening to me.  A comic that I had seen suddenly came to mind in which a woman asks her husband if she can tape the phone to her forehead so that she can at least pretend that he is paying attention to her as she speaks.  All of a sudden the idea came to me.  We are more connected than ever by way of our high speed internet and our plethora of handy, pocket-sized devices.  And yet, it seems like as connected as we are, there is an amazing amount of disconnect in our society because we are all so busy being “connected.”

In the video “family bonding,” I wanted to show a group of friends and family doing an “exaggerated” version of what I had seen that Saturday afternoon. I don’t have a lot of technical equipment, so I didn’t focus much on lighting or awesome recording.  I mainly just focused on getting the idea across in an effective way.  I chose to record the scene in an authentic family room with most of the same people who were there that Saturday.  I wanted the groups of people to not interact with each other, just with their devices.  We were all actually using our own devices doing real activities during the video.  I included the captions to add to the “shallowness” of the “bonding.”  The small child with his statement was supposed to give a glimpse into the mind of a three-year old in today’s connected world.  “Fun” or “funny” used to be more than looking at videos and pictures on an iPad.  Even the dog is seeking attention from the computer world.  The iPhone-inspired statement that closes the video is intended to drive home the idea of disconnect in our highly connected world.   

I hope you enjoyed the video.

Video Module

These last two weeks really put me out of my comfort zone. I had a seriously hard time coming up with an idea for this video project. It was especially hard for me because the majority of that which is really compelling to me right now is in another hemisphere. I wracked my brain, knowing that what is compelling to me would not necessarily be compelling to my audience. Honestly, I didn’t come up with the idea until the middle of the second week of the module.  In the end it wasn’t the recording and editing that posed the greatest difficulty for me (although my computer did blue-screen twice in five minutes and I had to call in back up forces for technical difficulties), it was thinking of a good idea.

Often times, in our classrooms, it’s not the details of the lesson that are the most difficult to put together. It is coming up with the idea in the first place. It is coming up with something that will be meaningful to the audience and will communicate the idea that you wish to communicate in an effective way. That’s probably why there are so many idea books in the teacher store:) 

Making it Better

Many of the required readings this week had to do with editing a video.  Obviously editing is a huge part of any video production.  Anyone who has ever shot any footage of anything knows that there are usually 2 really good seconds out of about 30:)  Editing also has to take place when planning a great lesson or unit.  There is so much material available nowadays.  Between textbooks, teacher stores, websites, other materials available online, colleagues, etc., there is an overabundance of resources for just about any topic.  The teacher's job is to sit down and sift through that material to put together the stellar lesson.  It's not always the easiest thing to do and it definitely is not something to leave for the last minute.  Sometimes it takes a few "trial runs" in the classroom to see what works and what doesn't.  (Unfortunately, to get a really good feel for if a lesson will work or not, you have to test it out on real students in a real classroom.  And, at times, you have to wait a whole year to get a chance at "take two.")