Secrets for Secondary School Teachers (4 page)

The first year of teaching is indeed one of the most exhilarating and challenging time periods in your career. These remarkable experiences will remain with you for the rest of your life. You will be tested in ways that you can’t imagine. You will learn some things about the world and about the process of learning that will surprise you. Most of all, you will learn a lot about yourself, some of which may frighten you, whereas some will delight you.

There will be precious little time for contemplation or in-depth planning. Your time will be eaten up by meetings, extracurricular activities, grading, and just trying to stay ahead of the students. Many of the things you had hoped to do will be put aside, at least temporarily. That’s okay. Your main job is just to learn your way around, to get to know your students, and experiment with styles and methods until you find things that work best for you.

Be patient with yourself. Your principal and other colleagues know well what kind of stress you are under. They know you are inexperienced and will look for progress. Those who are harsh critics (and there will be some) often act
insensitively because they, too, are under stress and treat everyone that way; it probably isn’t personal.

It takes time, but eventually you will learn your way around, rest assured. Remember well what you are going through; before you know it, you will be the expert showing someone else around.

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Organizing Your Room

O
nce you can find your way around the school, the next priority is to organize the personal space in which you will be operating. You learned in education classes that the classroom environment is critical in setting the tone for everything else that you do. You know from your own experiences as a student that there exists quite a different atmosphere in a room that is drab versus one that positively vibrates with energy. You also know that different things happen in a room that is organized with desks in neat rows versus those arranged in a circle.

The culture of your school, what other teachers are doing around you, the subjects you are teaching, and your personal philosophy of learning, will each contribute to the goals you have for organizing your classroom. As you begin to set up your room, consider not only your needs but also those of students.

I (Cary) always appreciated when the classroom was arranged in a different order than the traditional rows, one after the other. If the class size is small enough, it would be great to be creative and change things up a bit every once in a while. My government teacher arranged the seats in a big circle and she sat in one of the seats just like the students. In a way, it put everyone on the same level and encouraged more discussion among the students.

Another teacher would sometimes stop class and have us break up into groups of four, moving four desks together in a square for each group. It really doesn’t take long to move the desks around and breaks up the monotony of the normal class routine. Spontaneity is the key to grabbing the students’ attention.

I (Jeffrey) once shared a classroom with another teacher who had a very different style than my own. The first thing I’d do each day was rearrange the room with all the desks in a big circle so that students could see and talk to one another. I wanted a more democratic structure than a traditional teacher-centered classroom, one that encouraged interaction. Because this was a class in social skills training, this particular physical environment was entirely appropriate.

My colleague, however, was teaching a content-oriented course in a far more traditional manner. He was threatened by the things I was doing in my class that directly contradicted many of the values he considered most important: discipline, control, and authority. He believed learning took place through his lectures, whereas I valued student interaction. Our room arrangements reflected these pedagogical styles.

Because I was a new teacher, and because my colleague had a lot of power in the school, he worked behind the scenes to make me comply with his standards. The principal approached me apologetically, saying that he had some complaints because I was leaving my room “in disarray” for the next class. Perhaps it would be better, he admonished me, if I just left the desks “the way they were supposed to be.” I was appalled, of course, but I learned a valuable lesson about how our own actions as teachers impact, and sometimes even
threaten, our colleagues. In the future, I shared my plans for seating arrangements with my principal and got him on “my side” in advance. I also asked my students to return the chairs to their traditional placement before leaving the room.

We mention this object lesson not to discourage you from taking risks, experimenting with alternative classroom structures, or expressing your unique style through your teaching—quite the contrary. We hope you do create a classroom environment that is stimulating enough to keep students’ interest and encourages them to think for themselves and challenge ideas. Just remember: Everything you do as a new teacher is being watched by others and evaluated according to their standards.

By establishing routines with the students, desks can quickly be arranged and rearranged during a class period. If you share a room with another teacher, you will need to communicate and negotiate not only how desks are arranged, but how whiteboards/blackboards and bulletin boards are utilized, as well as how desk, bookshelf, and cabinet space is used.

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ESOURCES

The first step in organizing your room is to check out the resources you have to work with. Spend a few minutes sitting in different parts of the room to observe what it feels like. Where is the flag located? Where is the intercom speaker? Imagine you are a student sitting there, daydreaming about something far more important than whatever is going on in the room at the time. Note what is within the visual field from each point in the room. Listen for the acoustics as well, to hear how sound travels, both for sounds within the classroom and potentially distracting noises outside.

Survey where the bulletin boards are located, as well as the chalkboards/whiteboards, pencil sharpeners, lights, electric sockets, overhead projector, computer, or any other available equipment. Remember, when you use any audiovisual aids, you will need access to electricity and ways to avoid
glare so the screens are clearly visible. If you have a telephone line in your room, you will want to position a desk and chair near the phone jack. Also note what type of heating or air conditioning system is used. Will students be subjected to strong air blowing on them, depending on where they sit?

Next, look at the furniture and equipment that has been assigned to your room. Do you have bookshelves, tables, chairs, desks, file cabinet, wardrobe, a computer? Is there any audiovisual equipment in the room? What items do you feel are most important? Start making a list of what is missing. Keep in mind that the resources available in your school may not match with what you were once told in teacher training was mandatory for good learning to take place. Technical aids are certainly useful, but they may not be absolutely crucial for good learning to occur. For now, make a list of what you need, and hold onto it until you figure out the most politically expedient ways to lobby for what you want. And if, for example, you are lacking computer technology in the classroom, find out how to reserve time in computer labs and/or the library for student projects, or see if there is another teacher you can be paired with to share a computer or audiovisual equipment such as a TV/VCR.

Most schools have a media or audiovisual center where equipment is stored. Sometimes, equipment is kept in each department. Even if you don’t have permanent equipment, you might be able to gain access to things on an as-needed basis. For example, most foreign-language teachers have a television monitor, a VCR, and a cassette recorder reserved for them, purchased with federal grant money. Can arrangements be made for you to keep equipment in your room on a regular basis? Some schools even have opaque projectors available for your use. In addition, many districts have media centers with wide varieties of instructional materials available for teachers to reserve and use. In some states, the resources are housed at regional rather than district levels.

Check to see what supplies, supplementary materials, and curriculum resources you will inherit or have access to. Again,
sometimes these resources will be stored in a department chair’s room or other office, other times in a media center, or both. Decide where you will keep these materials and how they will be distributed to your students.

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LOW AND
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OVEMENT

Room arrangements are critical to maintain student safety as well as engagement with class activities. From what direction will the students enter the room? Will they have sufficient space to walk by desks or tables with their big book bags? You have probably already given consideration to how you want to arrange the room to fit your teaching style and course content. Will students be listening most of the time or working with partners? How much will cooperative group work be a part of your classes? Will students need resources or reference material as they interact with one another?

Where will you place your desk? What will be on it? Will you have more than one “teacher work center”? Is placing your desk near a telephone a factor in your decision? Will you have a computer on your desk? You will want to keep your personal things in an area that is not easily accessible to students, yet is visible to you at all times.

Specific seating arrangements are designed to accomplish different goals. As you walk around the school visiting other teachers, check out the ways they have arranged their rooms. Note the advantages and disadvantages of each. Some of the more common configurations include these:

•   Traditional rows of desks to maximize the number of students in the room and maintain order

•   Rows of desks facing each other across a center divide to encourage student-teacher interaction

•   Horseshoe arrangement with desks facing the front for maximum eye contact with students

•   Tables seating small groups of 4 to 6 students for cooperative learning

•   Desks in one large circle to facilitate student interaction

•   A “fishbowl” design, with an inner and outer circle of desks

Of course, a combination of arrangements may be possible, depending on the particular learning activity. In fact, one way to keep students engaged is to devise ways that move them around from one seating arrangement to another. Nevertheless, you will still wish to settle on a relatively stable arrangement to begin with, at least to facilitate taking attendance until you get to know the students.

One other consideration in space design is related to managing student behavior. Because issues related to classroom behavior and discipline will be among your greatest challenges, you will want to make sure to arrange things in such a way that allows you full view of everything going on in the room. That is why many teachers prefer to use an overhead projector so they can face the students rather than turn their backs and write on the front board. Also, you will want to consider potential problems that could emerge. For example, some students will find countless pieces of paper or Kleenex to throw away. Their pencil leads will always be breaking. If you don’t want students to cross your line of vision during your instruction, place the objects they need access to, such as boxes of tissue, paper, pencil sharpeners, and wastebaskets, at strategic points around, or on either side of, the room.

The larger your classes, the less flexibility you will have. Often new teachers have no choice in whether there will be desks or tables in their rooms. There is no sense whining and complaining about what you don’t have in the way of resources, equipment, and furniture; for now, make the best of what you do have. Improvise as much as you can. Visit other classrooms for ideas. Begin a list of what you’d like to obtain, and keep your eyes and ears open for opportunities to fill in what is missing.

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OARDS
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The impression the room gives as students enter will set the tone for the class. Consider all the display space in the form of bulletin boards and blank walls. Because you can figure that at any given moment in time, more than half your students are in the midst of fantasy or otherwise occupied with thoughts about their families, friends, love lives, or lack thereof, it is important that you design displays in ways that are visually stimulating but not distracting.

With me (Cary) or most of my friends, we could care less about stuff like bulletin boards. I can’t figure out what teachers think is so important about them. Who cares?

But my math teacher did something that was kinda cool. He put, on one of the side boards, a sheet of paper with the year, 1997, lettered on top. Then he had numbers going down the side from 1 to 100. Whenever you were bored or in the mood to do so, you could go up to the bulletin board and invent an equation using the numbers 1, 9, 9, and 7 whose answer would be a number from 1 to 100. For example, 1 + 9 + 9 + 7 = 26; 1 + (9 x 9) + 7 = 89. The challenge was fun.

In spite of this skepticism, bulletin boards are useful for brightening up the room as well as helping you to emphasize key points of given lessons. They allow you to post general information about school activities. You will probably want to post the bell schedule and other school- or district-mandated announcements, such as the school mission statement and where to go for a fire drill. You may use some of the space to post current events related to your content area. Keep in mind that, if students face the front of the room, spaces in the back should be designed for different purposes than those to the
sides or the front, such as motivational or decorative, because the students see them only as they enter or as directed.