Teach English in Renzhao Zhen - Qingdao Shi

Seating arrangements can make or break a classroom. Often teachers have little choice in the number of students, furniture, or square footage of their space. However, even with little freedom to choose small choices can still have major impacts of classroom dynamics and overall learning outcomes. To understand the impacts of an ideal classroom arrangement, it is important to first discuss bad seating arrangements to compare. While many people are used to the typical classroom set up with rows facing the board with a teacher at the front, this is not ideal for teaching English in a way that is engaging and dynamic. However, often we are faced with larger class sizes that make this one of our only options. The traditional classroom set up in orderly rows restricts the flow of a lesson, making group work harder and limiting the types of study and activate activities a teacher can utilize. In an especially packed classroom, a teacher may not have the space to do things like roleplaying, milling and survey games, or other more physical and game-based exercises. Orderly row setups point attention towards the teacher and lend to a power dynamic in which the teacher dominates. While at times a teacher needs to take more of the lecturer role, growing productive skills in students requires more back and forth learning among and with the students. With this arrangement, it is easy for the teacher to dominate the talking time and harder to promote student to teacher and student to student talking. This setup establishes a power dynamic in which the teacher is the holder of all knowledge and banking this knowledge into the students. A banking approach to education focuses only on knowledge input/output and not on cultivating mastery, deeper understanding, connection to the material. As we determine our pedagogy and best practices, we must consider the impact of power dynamics on learning. Seemingly simple, the seating arrangement is one tool we have to break down power dynamics and barriers to learning. Languages can be difficult and intimidating, so having engaging and fun lessons is important to make the learning fun. We want to create a classroom environment that is collaborative, inviting, and helps ease the stress of our students. Breaking away from the norm of the traditional classroom set up and seating assignments can make English class something students look forward to. While it may take a lot more flexibility and relinquishing of control on behalf of the teacher, alternative classroom setups can make the learning experience better for the student. In my experience, it is important to choose alternate seating arrangements based on the language level of the students. An ideal set up for beginner to low-pre intermediate students would be smaller subgroups around separate tables. In this structure, the teacher can easily ask students to engage in individual work, pair work, and group work. This structure helps promote more student to student talk but removes some of the anxiety and nervousness that comes with a whole class scenario. Depending on the space available, the instructor could also move tables aside to do whole class games and activities. Small group tables allow the teacher to intentionally group students across ability levels. By pairing students of varying levels of strength and understanding, the teacher can encourage students to learn from each other and promote student to student support. If there are disciplinary issues that arise (such as group tension or bullying) groups can be rearranged. It would be important to make group rearrangement happen somewhat regularly (maybe every couple months) to promote relationship building among students, keep things interesting, and adjust for competency deficiencies or disciplinary issues. An ideal set up for intermediate to advanced students would be an open circle or horseshoe set up. At this stage of their educational journey, many students can communicate fairly effectively but are lacking in fluency or accuracy. Students at these stages may have less hesitation to communication and less anxiety about being a part of a whole classroom. Using a horseshoe/circle set up encourages open dialogue, whole group participation, and shifts the power dynamic towards more equal footing. Forcing students to be equally visible to each other, this arrangement can be used to promote more productive communication usage. Our goal with these learner levels is to grow their comfort and sense of agency with their English language skills. Facilitated properly, this seating arrangement can empower and encourage students to actively engage. Discussions during the engagement phase can dive deeper and there is more room to do fun activate activities like role-playing or debating. A teacher can promote a group identity that is more intimate and helps students to focus on the lesson and challenge themselves more. No seating arrangement is perfect and sometimes alternative seating arrangements are not possible given space, furniture, or school culture. While orderly rows restrict student talking and engagement, they do help cut down on discipline problems. Tables are great for group work, but also make it hard to maintain eye contact with the whole class during board work. Horseshoes/circles create a more intimate learning environment but are only possible with smaller class sizes. There is no one size fits all approach, but as teachers, we need to recognize the impact that seating arrangement can have on classroom dynamics and learning outcomes, and adjust in the best ways that we can.