The Sound of Future-Ready Learning Spaces

From the Edutopia post "Visualizing 21st Century Classroom Design"

As I mentioned in my post last week, the physical learning spaces our students enjoy today are transforming as we embrace the shifts in the education our children need to be successful.  In Mr. Glimco's blog post this week, he talks more about the future of our learning spaces as discussed and envisioned by our District 107 Future Planning Committee.  Articles like "Why The 21st Century Classroom May Remind You of a Starbucks" and "21st Century Education for a 21st Century Economy" helped shape the vision for what we want our future classrooms to look like.  Flexible learning spaces with room for collaboration and innovative technology are at the forefront of this vision.  But in addition to what a classroom looks like, to me it is equally important to think about what a future-ready classroom sounds like.

What will our future-ready classrooms sound like?

Loud!
Students should be collaborating, tinkering, and actively "doing" on a regular basis.  This requires oral communication between students, as well as regular guidance from the teacher.  This doesn't mean the teacher is telling students what to do; rather the teacher is asking strategic questions to get students thinking at higher levels and is providing specific feedback when students veer off-track.  Students should also be engaging in similar types of discourse with one another as they analyze and critique the reasoning of their peers during problem-solving processes.  When students are building, creating, and experimenting, it is important to hear the sound of materials being assembled and disassembled, the sounds of videos being recorded and revised, and the sounds of hard work.

Inquisitive!
As educators, it is our goal to promote autonomous problem-solvers and critical thinkers.  To do this,  teachers must encourage students to question their own thinking and the thinking of others to help them understand how to applying their learning to novel situations.  Teachers should not be the only ones asking the question; students should be asking questions too!  Asking good, thoughtful questions forces cognitive dissonance, which leads to the acquisition of new information or a new way of thinking.  A blog post I wrote back in October, 2015, discusses how students can use technology meaningfully to engage in higher level thinking tasks, which can include investigating the answers to their own juicy questions.

Reflective!
Reflection is another important component of a future-ready classroom.  While teachers certainly coach, question, and support students through specific feedback, it is important that students are also thinking critically about their experiences themselves.  Asking themselves questions like "What was successful and why?" and "What didn't work, and what do I think went wrong?" will help students learn from their experiences to improve their thinking in the future.  Thomas Edison epitomized this reflective nature when he said, "I have not failed.  I've just discovered ten thousand ways that don't work."

Supportive!
In a future-ready classroom, risk-taking is embraced and encouraged.  We know from Carol Dweck's research on the Growth Mindset that failure provides great learning opportunities.  Synapses fire in the brain when mistakes are made, which leads to learning.  The goal in a future-ready classroom is to provide students with a safe, supportive environment where failure is accepted and even encouraged since teachers know this is when the richest learning opportunities occur.  There are an abundance of books about failures detailing how such experiences have led to learning and great success.  It is important to remember that encouraging perseverance and patience throughout this process is what leads to the greatest growth after failure so learning can truly occur.

The Evolution of Our Learning Spaces

I graduated from middle school in 1998, and while that year is before our Pleasantdale Middle School students were even born, I know I am still pretty young.  One would think that my educational experience would be pretty similar to that of our current students...but in actuality, that is not the case.  Clearly, the evolution of technology has dramatically changed the landscape of education today.  However, what may not be as glaringly obvious is the fact that the learning spaces, the physical environments in which the students learn, have transformed over the years as well.

Students work in pairs
in Mrs. Bubulka's class.

When I was in school, I always sat in an individual desk which was always arranged neatly in a row.  I remember vividly students getting in trouble for kicking the basket on the desk in front of them.  Nowadays, there are still occasions when students sit in rows (independent work is certainly still valued!), but more often than not, students are sitting with a partner or a small group in order to compare and contrast ideas and work collaboratively with one another.  This means students are seated around tables or at desks clustered into groups.

Students work at tables
in Mrs. Triggs's class.

Many of us remember the movie clip from Ferris Bueller's Day Off where the Ben Stein plays the epically boring economics teacher lecturing on the Hawley-Smoot Tariff Act.  Luckily for our students, lectures like these are a rarity nowadays.  Our students are encouraged to construct their own learning, and teachers take on the role of facilitators who ask strategic questions, probe deeper thinking, and provide students with opportunities to engage in critical thinking tasks.  Because much of the learning nowadays is student-centered, there is rarely a "front" of the classroom.  Sometimes students are facing the side of the room where content is projected on the Promethean board, while other times students do not have the need to "face" any direction in particular since the teacher as "sage on the stage" does not have a central role in lesson delivery.  This allows for more flexibility when teachers set up their classrooms since every nook and cranny has the potential to become a learning space.  In fact, the District 107 Future Planning Committee spent a significant amount of time discussing the future of learning spaces in our schools, and we are excited to share some of that work with you in the upcoming weeks.

A student works on his art
in the hallway at PMS.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we know that students learn best when they are comfortable in their environment.  This means providing students as many opportunities as possible to have a voice in how the room is arranged and providing them with some ownership in the classroom environment.  When I was in school, student work was hung on bulletin boards outside the classroom, but often times the classroom walls themselves were for store-bought posters.  While these posters may provide useful information, they did not give students a sense of ownership in their learning or in the classroom.  Now when we take a look in our classrooms, we see student work all around the room.  Often times the student work serve as anchors for future classroom discussions and points of reference.  Teachers may ask students, "Remember when..." while pointing to a student-created poster hanging on the wall.  This validates the students' learning and reinforces the classroom culture where high expectations for all students are valued.

As our world changes, so much education, and along with that the physical space our in which our children learn.  Stay tuned...next week we will be sharing the District 107 Future Planning Committee's vision for the continued evolution of learning spaces in our district!

Displaying student work in classrooms has become the norm.