It is Time for a Change: How classroom layout impacts relationships
I just finished my 18th year in the classroom and have realized something: what I do now is nothing like what I did 10 years ago. It’s not even like it was 5 years ago. And I miss the way it used to be.
Let me explain.
Identifying the Disconnect
I wholeheartedly support change for the sake of improvement. I thought that was what was happening, but over the past few years, I’ve realized there is a disconnect in my classroom. Specifically, I’ve lost my connection with my students.
The pandemic created a mental health crisis in our students.
I’ve racked my brain trying to figure out exactly what the issue is.
It’s easy to look back at the past four years and say, Covid did this. And that is probably true to an extent, but I don’t think it holds all the answers. Sure, teaching our students to live a life of fear is instilling in them a naturally anxious outlook, which is creating a mental health crisis our country is in no way prepared to handle. But I don’t think, in my case, it is a direct link to my disconnect in the classroom.
It’s also easy to look at social media and point a judging finger. Clearly, that is a curse on society these days. Giving everyone the ability to hide behind their keyboard and just spout off anything that pops into their mind, regardless of the civility they are skirting around, has proven to be more of a divider than a unifier. And that seems to only be getting worse. Regardless, it is a problem that is not going away. Thankfully, my District leadership is taking some drastic steps that I hope will have a positive outlook on our students, starting with this year’s middle schoolers. Still, the effects of that at the high school level will not be seen for at least two to three years down the road.
Impact of Renovation and Technology
Needless to say, the effects of the pandemic and the doom-scrolling addiction are not going away anytime soon. So, what else could be the issue in my classroom?
I was fortunate to get a room renovation a few years ago. It was planned before I even took my current job, but the actual build-out happened in the fall of 2020, when so many of my students were not even in the classroom but were opting to “learn” video production over Zoom.
As students slowly filled the room over the next year or so, I noticed a problem. They were filing into my new one-to-one iMac computer lab and excitedly logging into their computers, which was great, but they were now hiding behind these screens just like they did on Zoom. They were using these monitors as partitions to keep them from engaging with the other people in the room. They were now hiding in plain sight.
Despite recognizing this condition, I was excited to finally have a computer for every student. This would allow me to teach editing the way I had always wanted to. I could create step-by-step tutorials that walked my students through the intricacies of Adobe Premiere Pro. And it worked! I have students of all ability levels who are now editing in ways they never thought possible. They are breaking away from the cookie-cutter “editing” of CapCut and can actually add effects, adjust keyframes, and create content from the ground up.
This was amazing. Well, kind of.
On one hand, I had a way of delivering instruction that all students could access. It was broken down in ways that all students could follow. It was easy to collect assignments because it was all distributed through our LMS, Schoology.
On the other hand, it allowed me to continue teaching “remotely.” Of course, I was there, in the room with the students, but because of how I did the tutorials, students could work at their pace. They seldom had questions for me, leading to fewer opportunities for interaction, both between me and them, and as I learned, between them and their fellow classmates.
Finding the Solution
Rows of computers felt more like a factory than a creative space.
The rigid rows of desks and computers created physical and psychological barriers that hindered interaction and spontaneous collaboration. The computer lab model produced more editors but fewer creators. It allowed students, many of whom in my Level 1 classes are freshmen, to have a place to hide in my classroom without the need to talk to each other and to grow as people. And this had to stop.
So, during the last week of school, I called an audible. I stopped the assignment we were about to begin and had the students help me break apart our computer-lab rows and create “pods” of desks that formed tables. Tables where they were no longer staring at the backs of the heads of the row in front of them, but they were looking into the faces of people right across the table from them.
That took about half of the class block, leaving us about 45 minutes to adjust to the new layout. I told the students to go ahead and have a seat. To my surprise, they all migrated to the desks around where I was standing. They sat in the seats and on the edge of the tables, and they leaned into the moment, something that had been missing from my classroom for the past few years. We sat and talked, about movies, TV shows, YouTubers, video games, whatever. After about 30 minutes, one student remarked, “Mr. Dempsey, this is the first time we have just talked like this all year. This is awesome.”
When he said that, I knew I was making the right decision.
Implementing Change
We kept about 20 of the computers and lined them around the room, so we still have places for students to edit, though not all of them at the same time. To counteract this, I plan to have multiple assignments running at the same time, some of which will only require the students to bring and use their school-issued Chromebook. Some will be creative, collaborative assignments where they brainstorm or draw storyboards. The point is, we will have something for everyone.
A big advantage to the new layout is the flexible seating arrangements. One of the big problems with the computer lab is that if you need to relocate a student for any reason, they have to spend a considerable amount of time setting up their new computer. While you hope to just get students locked into a workstation they can use for the entire year, sometimes computers stop working, or sometimes 504s necessitate a relocation, and other times you realize that behavior merits a change. In a computer lab, any one seat change means that you have to move at least two students because they are usually just trading seats.
Another advantage is that it will allow me to have good collaborative spaces for day-to-day work, but it will also allow me to create learning “stations” where I can have groups rotate for specific instruction on, say, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 4K cameras, and another with the Sony PXW-Z90s.
A final perk to this new layout is that it will afford me easy access to move around the room and manage the students with proximity. In the computer lab layout, we were essentially creating walls that made it very difficult to manage the room visibly. This new layout will provide paths for me to move about easily from one student to the next, making it easier to keep the class focused and to further establish relationships. This will allow for more one-to-one conversations, and while it will admittedly be more work from a planning standpoint, it will be much better from a relationship standpoint.
Anticipated Benefits
Change can be difficult. It will be a learning curve for me and for my students who are advancing to the subsequent level of the program. It will undoubtedly present challenges, but I think the payoff of helping these students truly understand and appreciate the collaborative nature of film is 100% worth it.
As you wrap up the school year and start thinking about how you want to be better next year, maybe it’s time for a change.
Meet the Author, Josh Dempsey
Josh Dempsey is a video and film teacher at Marietta High School in Marietta, Georgia. With nearly 20 years of experience in the classroom, Josh is just as excited as his students to keep learning about the power and possibilities of this visual medium. He invites you to follow his students and their work online by following them on social media @bdn_marietta.
Josh loves traveling with his wife, Megan, and their two kids (with another on the way), and more pets than should be allowed. If you want to follow their adventure and get some tips and tricks for RV travel and epic road trips, check them out on Instagram at @eastrollswest
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