As a Montessori school, the room arrangements for all of the classrooms are designed in a manner that encourages self-discovery and are designed to appeal to different ages since the classrooms include students of different grades. At our school, the primary students encompass 3 grades levels (pre-school year 1 and 2 and kindergarten) then there are LE (1st and 2nd grade, ME (3rd and 4th grade), UE (5th and 6th grade) and MS (7th and 8th grade). Also in keeping with Montessori, our classrooms are large, warm and bright with a variety of activities for individual exploration even at the MS level. The arrangements for all grades are designed so that teachers circulate through the rooms regularly rather than teach from the front. Teaching from the front of the room for longer than 10 or 15 minutes even in the Upper School is highly discouraged and most teachers are actively moving about the classroom.
There are no individual desks anywhere in our school either in the lower or upper school so that students are always collaborating and sharing desk space. I work in the Upper School, which encompasses the UE and MS classes. The English classroom is spacious and includes a book center where students love to sit to work or find a book and where class discussions are often held. The Science room is unique because the desks are designed for lab experiments for 2 students, but often these desks are pulled together to form larger tables and the addition of a small zoo is in keeping with the Montessori environment. Students and teachers use a large conference table at the back often for conferences or group work.
Teacher’s desks are found in each upper classroom though we share space so my desk is in the Science room along with the 2 science teachers even though I don’t teach that nor do my classes meet in the Science room. In the Lower School, there are no teacher’s desks, which is traditional in a Montessori classroom. Teachers use the same tables that the children use to do any work needed. In the Upper School, this was the practice at the beginning, but then it was just too hard for teachers to be organized since we all taught in different rooms so now we all have desks.
There has been a significant investment in technology over the past few years and every ME, UE and MS classroom has a SmartBoard and then each student in ME, UE and MS has their own laptop, as do all teachers. As such, there is little need for classroom desktop computers and this year, I don’t think there is any set-up. New this year is an iPad cart, which can be used by the whole school, but is primarily designed to add technology to the Primary and LE students who have no computer access (computers have not been encouraged for the very young in Montessori).
While the classrooms are ready and could be easily adapted for anyone with special needs (there is an elevator in the building), we do not have any students with special needs at the school.
Overall, the classrooms are a joy to teach in and not the norm. As such, I thought I would reflect on a very different classroom set-up at the public high school in town where I did my Action Research project for my Master’s a few years ago.
At the time, I was heavily influenced by the ideas of Michael Wesch and his video entitled “A Portal to Media Literacy,” and wanted students to collaborate despite the very traditional room seating arrangement (typical of all the classrooms at the high school). So the students took the individual desks, which started out all aligned to the front of the room for the teacher to lecture, and had them create small groupings (see photo). It made the room all messy – I loved it! More importantly, the students worked together in groups and they loved it.
If I were observing a classroom, I’d want to see a set-up like the school I’m at now that encourages cooperative learning whether it was in a Montessori environment or not. I’d like to see a classroom that is not focused on the teacher at the front of the room and has flexibility to allow students to find what works for them such as put on headphones or sit on a rug or comfortable chair. If they are not productive, it is the teacher’s job to help them find ways to focus but the goal is that the students discover how they learn best.
References
University of Kansas, (2002). The Montessori method: The path.Retrieved from: http://circleofinclusion.org/english/approaches/montessori.html
Wesch, Michael. (2008). A Portal to media literacy. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4yApagnr0s
