The first high school I taught in
had an open classroom design which was justified in terms of how it would
end restrictions on how we think about learning, disenclose our minds,
promote open dialogue, etc. Yet teachers did their best to construct as
many barriers as possible between their class and others. Administrators
used the structure to keep tabs on teachers with "bad attitudes."
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?
--STephen Van Hoose