The Swing Room

In my school most rooms ‘belong’ to a department, with the occasional math class showing up in a language room, etc. One room is shared by two departments.

And then there is the “swing” room. The swing room takes the extra class, the class that couldn’t fit. In previous years science classes met there on non-lab days. But now it is truly a hodgepodge, with math, social studies, language, science, health… Only one teacher is ever in there more than once a day, and some classes meet there only once or twice a week.

So we have ownership issues. Not “who gets the desk?” but “does anyone take care of this place?” And we can’t store things along the side walls. Books, workbooks, posters, papers, handouts covered many flat surfaces. Bookcases were full. And the worst of it: these materials and whatever posters were on the wall, all were from classes that no longer met in the room.

Click for more and a sketch —->

In addition, we have storage limitations in our school, and the back and righthand side of the room were used to store various equipment. Since no one ‘owned’ the room, no one objected.

Don’t get me wrong. This is a comfortable place to teach. The equipment is good. Two front boards and a back board (unfortunately blocked by equipment). Nice, moveable student desks. Reasonable light. A/C (a mite too strong). Cabinets. Bookcases. Four (or is it 3?) working PCs.

And the seating arrangement was awful. Now, it is a horizontally oriented room (wide, not particularly deep). But three long rows, no gaps between desks, with several sideways desks at the lefthand side…. I will include a sketch. Teachers could not walk through to student desks. Students couldn’t move. The wrong kind of talking was supported by this arrangement. The board by the teacher’s desk was at a bad angle for about a quarter of the class.

And this is where my geometry class meets. I spoke with the teacher who is in there the most. She was definitely up for a change. I checked in with the other teachers. No objections to something new.

The sketch is lousy, but the dashes are student desks, the rectangle in back are the PCs, the rectangle in front is the teacher’s desk, the x in the box in front is a structural pillar (grrr), the boards are to the left of the pillar, to the right of the pillar, and in the back right, obscured by stored equipment. The box to the side is approximately 2 feet square.