My two elementary colleagues gave up chairs a long time ago,
and they have urged me to do the same for many years. One of them has a room that is smaller, and the
other just prefers not to use chairs.
But I held out. Maybe it was the
high school teacher in me. Perhaps it’s
that I just crave order. Seating charts
make life easy. For whatever reason, I
needed my elementary students to sit in chairs.
Last year, I found myself moving around the classroom more
than ever. And I had the students moving
more than ever. We were singing around
the piano, gathering by the Smartboard, working at xylophone centers around the
perimeter, bringing instruments to the middle, working at centers in groups, dancing
in the middle, setting up risers for concerts, etc. Often we moved chairs (always a struggle when
you are 5 years old and the chair is as big as you). The only thing we seemed to be in chairs for
was attendance at the beginning and dismissal at the end.
But over the Summer I realized the chairs were also
hindering one more crucial element in a music classroom – the community that
comes from seeing one another’s faces while making music. That sealed the deal – no more chairs. If I want my students to be collaborative
creators, then I needed to arrange them in a way that allowed for better
collaboration.
My classroom (before I finished the bulletin board, I guess!) |
A retired choral director friend of mine always used to
rehearse in the round until concert time.
I am a big advocate of big, flexible space in a music room because you
never know how it might be used in the future.
Wenger or Stageright seated risers are much more flexible than
cast-in-place concrete steps in a music room.
Frankly, I have a large elementary music classroom and one
of my fears is that without chairs, people will think I have more space than I
need. People like that don’t understand
that flexible space is creative space. A
big, blank palette in the middle of a room that is used 50 different ways every
day. But to the untrained eye, it looks
like my class could fit just fine in a room half the size.
A long time ago, when I was searching for something to use for writing activities, I went to the cafeteria and asked if they had any old serving trays! VIOLA! They have served me well for MANY years! I also like the "lips" around the edges for when we are using manipulatives...things don't get lost as easily!
ReplyDeleteI am the only music teacher in my district who refuses to use chairs. We just do so much dancing and instruments! I went to home depot and got a sheet of white board and cut it into little white boards. We use those for desks.
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