No Walls

My friend, Jonathan, came in last week (with only 1-1/2 days' notice) to teach what turned out to be the entire 3rd grade about turtles.  Originally it was one teacher, and then she asked if he'd mind doing a 2nd class, and by the time he left he'd done them all.  He's so sweet!  And the kids had a great time.  Here's a pic of him with the original class.

I love him to death, but the man is chronically late.  We work together at my 2nd job and he's forever getting in trouble for being late to work.  Mrs. T wanted him there at 1:20, ready to begin, so I told him to be there at 1.  He said he'd be there at 12:30.  He got there at 12:45.  Worked for me!

So anyway, the whole point of all of this was that I brought him up to the library to get his stuff ready before going on to the classroom.  The class was in math lab, and he had pics on his phone he needed to pull off and move to a flash drive.  He'd never been in my school before and even he, an "outsider" if you will, was able to immediately recognize our layout as a "bad idea."

My school was built in the 70's using the open classroom concept.  We have no walls.  It makes the school architecturally interesting, but it's very noisy.  All the time.  

In the last 10 years "temporary walls" were put up to divide the classrooms up.  These are moveable, thin, and don't reach all the way from the floor to the ceiling, nor all the way from one end to the other.  It gives us a place to put our posters and things on the walls, but does very little for keeping the peace.  

My library, however, stands as the crowning jewel above it all.  The school is round, the library is raised -- they go up any of the 5 staircases or the ramp to come in to the library.  There are 3 classes underneath us, as well, that they go down the stairs from the main level of the school to reach.  In addition, we have 6 lofts that surround the library.  None of which have walls, so everything is open to us, and we are privy to all the sounds, noise, and foot traffic.

Here's an animoto tour I put together a few years ago for a project in one of my MLS classes.  This is my pre-SmartBoard days, so the layout is a little different now, but you'll get the idea...

So, at any rate...  I'm not sure what they were thinking when they came up with this "open classroom" concept.  It makes me wonder if it was someone who knew nothing about education.  Or were they thinking about the one-room school houses where everyone learned together?  We moved on from that for a reason, ya know...

We still have some of the architect's concept portraits at the school.  They're in a closet in the artroom.  They show small groups of 2-3 kids together in areas, well away from other kids, working cooperatively on things.  It would be great if we only had maybe 100 kids, all at about the same grade level.  Unfortunately we've got 30-some classes ranging from Pre-K through 4th.  

I went into a 4th grade class the other day while the teacher was trying to teach math.  The kids were humming along with the kinders in the next room who were essentially drowning her out singing their "Days of the Week" song (to the tune of the Adams Family, which is all I ever think of when I hear them).  

Well, now you have a better idea of where I "live" during the school day.  I need to get going before I'm late for work.  :)