Jace Flores Student Teacher Blog

The classroom, Room 311 or Mr. Brian’s Room as it may be called, is tight. Both literally and metaphorically. Literally speaking the classroom is constricted by a lack of space relative to the student size (and it is likely we will be taking on more 10th graders the week of 9/9 that will make this worse), so the maneuver room is veering on nonexistent. On a more metaphorical room, Mr. Brian has designed the space quite well to be inviting and thematic without being gaudy or excessive. There are history related posters on the wall by his desk, some Penn State mementos on The Fridge wall and next to the smart board. He also has a pride flag and BLM flag near the fridge to show his support for these respective causes.

On a more practical level each wall has a surface which serves its own function. The most important is the smartboard where Mr. Brian displays everything, such as the agenda, warmup, instructions, exit ticket and so on. It seems rather intuitive to use and naturally Mr. Brian has his laptop connected to it (though he has a personal laptop to handle things that don’t need to be displayed on the board, like reviewing student answers, handling emails, etc). The Fridge is a poster which is designed vaguely like an LG fridge, with the purpose of being a space where Mr. Brian can hang up work he considers exceptional. So far there has been one piece of work he has decided to put up on The Fridge. The wipe board by the door is for logistics where the daily community goal, class goal and homework is written for the 10th grade and APUSH. Not much else to this board. The last wall has a more fun wipe board that contains the quote of the week, history event of the day, a scoreboard for class participation points and a large mascot in the center. Students can guess what the mascot is by writing the answer on a slip and putting it in a nearby box. At the end of the week he randomly draws guesses and the first five to get it right are put up on the board and given some bonus points. A fun community building activity.

Now given the lack of room in the classroom there is not a lot of customization that can be done with desks, but I think Mr. Brian has done a good job. He has the desks split in two halves facing towards what he calls the aisle, which allows him to walk up and down the classroom to get a good look at the bulk of the students, particularly useful for when they do group work. He has the desks largely arranged around multiples of four because the students frequently do group work in fours, with the kids turning their desks in place when working (an efficient product of the lack of space). It is hard reaching the kids in the back near the mascot white board, but there is not much that can be done given the lack of room.

Overall I think given the major constraints in physical space Mr. Brian has done a good job in arranging the room to facilitate maximum teacher-student interactability and having the kids being able to work together or see the smart board. The walls are intelligently used for practical and fun purposes. We just dread having more students crammed in.