Classroom Seating: War Zone or Campfire?

            Most classrooms are still organized in military rows of desks riveted toward one focal point at the front of the classroom.  The message is clear: the teacher is the general; the students are the soldiers.  Focus on someone outside of yourself.  Only one face matters.  Lock step. Ten hup (“Attention”). Prepare for The Battle of the Grade.  Comply.  The illusion is that the teacher has more control, thereby.  That she is the performer. The students are the captive audience (captives, indeed). This puts pressure on teacher and students, alike. 

These student desks are, as most military things, of uniform size, as if to say: “To succeed, be like everyone else.  Stay in line. Pull in your arms and legs.”  No matter that students are different sizes, shapes, and handedness.  No matter that evenly spaced desks don’t allow for variations in leg length, cultural sense of social space, redolence of your neighbor: “Shut up and in. Stay put. You are part of a machine. You don’t matter.”

As a teacher, I find the military model intimidating and oppressive. I’m always “on.” The students are pointed at me, like a battery of guns. The military classroom invites students to hide, guerilla style, from me, and to hide behind and from each other.  It allows phone addictions to fester in laps and under pages.  It’s secretive. It’s inhumane and unnatural.  It’s being, literally, boxed in. 

Humans are social creatures.  The most iconic shape religions and businesses use is the circle: it is the sun; it is the campfire around which we gather against the cold and dark.  I’ll never forget how one of my earliest department colleagues sneered at me for putting my students into a circle.  She had a great need to be in charge, she beat her husband, her students hated her, and she didn’t like young upstart professors. Under her red wig, she was a scared novice afraid of change. But I have never abandoned the practice of putting my classes in circles.  And I’m happy that many teachers vary the configuration of desks in their classrooms, too.

Sitting in a circle in a classroom sends the same message as sitting around a campfire.  As the military classroom does, it provides a focal point—but this one is not single-pointed on the teacher—it is shared.  Open spaces in a war zone are dangerous. The space in the center of the circle classroom is our holding, our safe space.  There are many eyes to meet and names to learn. It says Possibility. It says Freedom. It says No one blocks anyone else: We are equally welcome here.  We can see and be seen.  We are social.  We matter.

Once I announce that we will be sitting in a circle, I never have to tell the class again.  When I arrive, sometimes a half hour early to chat with early comers, students have already moved the desks around the periphery of the room.  In classes where I have repeat students, the chairs are already so configured on the first day.  It is meaningful to them.  Except for those who need to not be there, students don’t seek to return to military rows. (As an aside, when students come in late on the first day, their ears all budded in, they will often sit down in the middle of the circle on a stray desk.  Perhaps they enjoy the sacred center. I’m fond of teasing them: “Look around.  What’s happening?”  Oh!)

When we reconfigure for small group work, I first have students stand up.  Otherwise, they prefer to skootch their desks while sitting—“Thigh exercise?” I ask.  Or, “I know you’re old and weak, but…” Finding space away from other groups, they create pods with perfect geometric designs around the front edges of their desks—a triangle for three, a pentagon for five. All equally face a center. For twos, it’s face to face. For fours, it’s a diner table, not a diner booth. 

Yes, my larger desk arrayed with hand-outs, books between book-ends, my singing bowl to bong us in and out (more on that in another post), is still at the front of the class by the board.  But students will often use it for their group work, presentations, enactments.  I freely push it off to the side.  And I walk into the middle of our circle to dance out an iambic pentameter, to actually hand-out hand-outs one at a time, to orchestrate a demonstration by bringing students together in that space.

And if the classroom is small and the registrar has overloaded the course, I push the table away altogether and sit in a classroom desk, myself. That says something, too.

Works Cited:

Cover Art: https://www.google.com/search?q=feng+shui+classroom&rlz=1C1JZAP_enUS811US811&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij4tnw4priAhWyd98KHYDrAeUQ_AUIDigB&biw=2048&bih=963#imgrc=sQzePRT5czoJ8M: