Working smarter.

What a wonderful month, October! You have been teaching for a month or so and are into the flow of the year. By now you are noticing what works and what doesn't. One thing that can drastically affect your classroom management is the way your room works.

Tomorrow, watch the way you and your students move through your room. Jot down the bottlenecks. Is there enough room for you and your students to move easily between tables? Can students easily get to things they need without crowding one another? Does your seating arrangement facilitate conversation or discourage it? If students face each other they are more likely to converse. Are you comfortable with that?

How do you demonstrate studio skills? Do you have to move students to do so? Can every student see what you are demonstrating? Have a student role-play demonstrating while you sit in the back and note how well you can see each move. Where else and how else could you demonstrate?

Where are supplies that students most frequently access? Is it easy for them to get there? Where are visual resources? Do you have to rummage through stacks of reproductions to find the ones you want? How else could you organize them? Is there stuff in your room that you don't really need? Get rid of it.

After you have evaluated the potential difficulties created by your room arrangement, get some students to help you push things around. Using a helpful class, have a moving day. Take an afternoon to put things in places that work. I find that it's best to put the things you use most in the most accessible places. Ask students for ideas; it's their room, too.

When we see things in a different way, it allows all of us, students and teachers alike, to work smarter.