>With the new development of the open classroom school, why is it that
>all the
>teachers tried to construct as many barriers as possible to create for
>themselves "new rooms" ? My fiancee, an El. Ed. major at the College of
>Saint Rose, also mentioned something to me about how teachers created
>rooms
>of their own by putting up barriers and such. She shared with me a
>little
>fact that these schools were built around the ideas of team teaching,
>but
>yet, teachers did not want to be part of this method of teaching. Is
>this
>true? What are some of the underlying problems to this spatial
>arrangement of
>the open classroom? What are some of the current philosophies on
>education
>these days and where it might be heading in the future?
Having taught in a building that was designed to be open classrooms in
New Mexico and having my children attend a school in Colorado that was
designed to be open classrooms, I have some comments about similarities
across states. They both were divided by bookcases, blackboards, and
file cabinets into rooms. I never even _heard_ of an open classroom
school that did not eventually construct "walls" around the rooms.
Noise level is the most often stated complaint, but I think teachers
were barracading themselves into a safe, private corner. The physical
architecture declared the school and the minds within were open. The
social structures that bound teachers, students, and administration
into struggles for power or attempts to escape from power were never
addressed. I did not like having to listen to the teacher next to me
teach math when I was trying to have my class read silently. We tried
to schedule our times similarly, but there wasn't enough time we could
work together to do more than cursory plans. The kids, both mentally
and physically would wander between "rooms." I was a beginning teacher
and very guarded about my ability to teach. The times I received
attention from my principal and/or the teacher next door were more
likely to be complaints about my class disturbing those around me, so
it's no wonder I wanted to be left alone.
And the school my own children attended eventually spent its sparse
funds on constructing real walls one summer.
In most cases, the decision to build such schools was made at the
district administration level and the teachers who ended up in these
schools were there because the jobs were, not because it was an open
school. My sense is that district policies on staffing new buildings
was a constraint and that, in one case at least, so few tenured
teachers wanted to teach in open schools that they ended up with new
teachers by default.
Kathie
******************************************************
\\\\\\\\\\\\\You live you learn
\\\\\\\\\\\You love you learn
\\\\\\\\\You cry you learn
\\\\\\\You lose you learn
\\\\\You bleed you learn
\\\You scream you learn////////alanis morissette:jagged little pill
******************************************************
Katherine_Goff who-is-at ceo.cudenver.edu
http://ouray.cudenver.edu/~kegoff/index.html