Kris Schottleutner has served in Christian schools for 28 years. He has been employed as a secondary teacher, and he presently serves as the superintendent of Mansfield Christian School in Mansfield, Ohio. He and his wife, Robin, have four children, two grandsons, and a chipmunk that lives in their backyard.
Our Creator gave us many examples in nature of organization and orderliness. The cute little chipmunk is one such illustration. This animal plans and organizes his burrow in specific areas for various functions, such as storing food, building a bedroom, and even creating a false exit for protection (Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts 1976). Perhaps as educators we could pause to consider this God-given instinct in the chipmunk in order to challenge us as we plan and organize our classrooms.
Before school begins each year, I enjoy walking into the classrooms to see what teachers have done to prepare their rooms. I am always pleasantly surprised to see how the rooms are both arranged and decorated. They reflect the individuality of the teachers. An observer can often easily see how a teacher has planned for specific activities and arranged the room for different functions. The wise teacher plans ahead so that the arrangement of furniture serves to enhance lessons—instead of hindering instruction. The direction of the students’ desks and the placement of the teacher’s desk can dictate the focus of the students’ eyes and help control their attention. The overall configuration, which includes the placement of desks, white boards, bookshelves, file cabinets, and other furniture, can reveal creative planning and the organizational skills of the teacher. The arrangement of a teacher’s room also establishes and projects a tone. Students will then respond to this tone.
As teachers think through daily lesson plans, they need to be flexible about the room arrangement because a new configuration can enhance a lesson. These changes could include, for example, moving the desks together in pods for small-group discussions or moving the desks to the walls to make room for skits and other types of presentations. When they arrange their classrooms before students enter, teachers can create anticipation, interest, and enthusiasm for the coming lesson. Using a variety of teaching methods requires changing room arrangements in order to help students interact with the teacher or with each other, or to work by themselves.
A monumental challenge for teachers with much experience is to examine their rooms in order to determine whether over the years extra desks, equipment, plants, fish tanks, or bookshelves have crowded out student space. Besides self-examination, teachers can also gain a fresh perspective of their classrooms by having their rooms evaluated by a peer from another department. I have seen classrooms that appear to double in size when a teacher decides to move out the extra stuff and work to meet the needs of students. Perhaps this could be the year for some classrooms to put on a new look.
As they maintain classrooms that are neat and well organized, teachers are helping students to follow daily routines such as those that involve where to turn in their assignments, where their backpacks belong, where to find materials and supplies, or how to respect the property of others. When teachers implement such basic habits in their classrooms, students learn many character qualities such as orderliness, responsibility, faithfulness, and respect.
The physical arrangement of a classroom can make a powerful impact on the teaching and training of young people. When teachers model their organizational skills for students, these students will in turn often follow that example.
Reference List
Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts, Inc. 1983. Character sketches: From the pages of Scripture illustrated in the world of nature. Skokie, Ill.: Rand McNally and Company.
For Classroom Arrangement, Consider the Chipmunk 6.3