EduTwitter is prone to scraps and the past week or so has been no different. The latest social media hot topic educators are going ten rounds over? Classroom set-up.
In the red corner, we find the sofa-lovers and kneeling-station devotees, wielding their beanbags with malice as they eye up the competition. Over in the blue corner, the traditionalists line up smartly, passionately clutching seating plans that have been painstakingly drawn with a ruler and without so much as a throw-cushion in sight. Across the land, timelines have been filling up with insults and accusations as the sides slug it out over which set-up is best.
Oh, come on.
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As teachers, we have dedicated our lives to helping children and young people achieve their potential. Inherent to this is the need for compassion. The need for a “live and let live” philosophy that seems forgotten as soon as we log into social media. Anonymously lambasting a colleague for daring to set their classroom up differently to you is appalling and wrong. Why does someone have to do it the same way as you do? Why is the way you do it any more valid than the way I do it?
Teachers arguing on social media
Within this treacherous landscape, with accusation and needling recrimination waiting at every turn, trying something new is a very risky option. This is the climate where innovation goes to die.
Teaching is a tough enough gig. We are not screwing the caps on toothpaste tubes here. Our teachers have their hands inside the minds of the next generation. It is crucially important and emotionally exhausting work. And to get it right, teachers need to be able to get into a guddle. Make a mess. Try new things. Puzzle it out. Try, try, try and fail, fail, fail.
And they need time, space and encouragement to examine the black box data of the latest failure, work out what went wrong and what the next steps are.
What they don’t need is a load of online grief from a stranger, scolding them from afar for having the audacity to try something new.
Stifling teacher innovation
An effective classroom is an ecosystem in its own right. When teacher and learners are allowed to take creative control of the learning space, they will always make it fit for purpose. Classrooms are not clean rooms; they should not be sanitised by school leaders or colleagues who dictate the Right Way of Doing Things. Tuning your ear to the unique ebb and flow of your learners and tailoring the environment to get the very best from them is the core business of all good teachers.
Sofa-laden or hospital-style neat and tidy, a good classroom is one owned by the people who work in it. It is a space where a learner will look up suddenly, blinking as the bell rings, unaware of the passing of time because the level of intent focus was so great.
Classrooms should be grubby with human endeavour but, beyond that, let’s leave the decisions up to those best placed to make them and drop the judgement. We might just learn something from each other if we do.
Susan Ward is depute headteacher at Kingsland Primary School in Peebles, in the Scottish Borders. She tweets @susanward30
