A Teacher's Domain

Across the country, teachers are emerging from a well deserved break and busy organizing their classrooms. If anyone is under the assumption that this process happens with little effort, then they need to follow a teacher in August.

Although teachers have spent months thinking about how they will create learning spaces for the coming year, they have to wait until their rooms have been cleaned. Teachers eagerly anticipate the day they are given permission to enter their domain, while knowing it will be distressing. Often, they have to search for items that have gone missing or repair/replace items that have been damaged over the summer. The cost of appropriately designing the interior of every classroom is rarely in a school budget. The professional time it takes a teacher to work on their classrooms is never paid in full.

There is an enormous amount of planning and preparation that goes into producing a classroom environment for student learning. A myriad of factors need to be considered, from safety to room capacity and context. The atmosphere is created for the joy of learning, passion for content and the love for students. It's a setting the teacher and students will spend the majority of their waking hours for the next nine months. In health facilities, no one would tolerate a place that was unsightly and the quality of care would be suspicious.  Sadly, school buildings do not receive the same kind of attention and most teachers have to work with ancient and crowded spaces.

Teachers need to establish the places they will be storing student supplies and work, arrange the student desks for large, small and independent group learning, decide on locations for curriculum materials and endless other details. It's far more than putting up a bulletin board. A teacher's routines and procedures and how they engage students in learning are dependent on the classroom structure. Student access and developmental appropriateness are important considerations for determining how the learning will transpire in the classroom.

Teachers design the learning spaces on their own time and dime. If teachers appear to be overly protective of their domains, these are some of the reasons. Teachers put in more energy and money to making the best learning environment for students than people every realize. 

#LienOnMe  #ShowUsYourSpaces


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