I was hired to teach in an open space classroom as my first job
also. The job was in a small mining town in the Colorado Rockies. The
superintendent hired new teachers from Berkeley and UCLA and San Diego. I
found myself in a newly remodled high school that had been built in the
middle thirties. Three other teachers and I were given the second floor
that had once been five high school classrooms with a large hall, and was
now one open space with a 100 foot length of south facing windows, and 110
fifth graders. We were given a text to follow, IGE, Individually Guided
Education, developed from the IDEA foundation, which explained step by
step the outcomes of how to evaluate our organization of teaming. A nun
arrived at our school door from Desmoines, Iowa. Sister Tekla. She was
our facilitator for one year. She had been trained in an IGE school,
parochial, and was now ready to provide her guidance and support.
We were highly successful. We had control of our budget, how to
grade, curriculum, materials, classroom organization, schedule. The
administrators would drop by to see what sort of support they could
supply. We were part of a larger state organization of IGE schools, and
we met monthly to share expertise and problem solve. We held yearly
conventions where teachers put on workshops for other teachers on how to
run nongraded, open space classrooms.
And after about twelve years it all faded. During that time
period school districts never brought on more IGE schools, though in my
school district every school was an IGE school. Open space was seen as
problematic, which it was in the schools that I visited that were open
space but not IGE. However, no doubt there were IGE schools that weren't
successful. But for me, it all provided a paradigm in which with the
systemic support, training, and control by the teachers over the
activities that constitute teaching, open space schools can work.
phillip