On the Other Side of the Brain » open space http://www.jeffreygene.net reflections from a practitioner venturing into the world of research Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:49:08 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 en hourly 1 Open Space http://www.jeffreygene.net/2010/01/open-space/ http://www.jeffreygene.net/2010/01/open-space/#comments Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:49:08 +0000 Jeff Pierce http://www.jeffreygene.net/?p=180 Partially due to procrastination1, but also thanks to some timely inspiration2, I decided to try out something different.

I stopped by my classroom on the weekend and did this:

Goodbye Chairs

All tables and chairs, pushed to the side.

Man you shoulda heard the kids as they walked in on Monday. “Mr Pierce, who DID this? Where do we SIT?” An atrocity, truly.

Open Space3 is beautifully simple. “You have five minutes to create a a space where you can be comfortable and finish your warm up activity.” And we end every lesson ten minutes early, which gives us enough time to reset the classroom back to square one, clean up the whole place, and wrap up what we learned that day.

Amazing stuff happens. Kids are free to hide under the window ledge, lay on the carpet, huddle in a circle with their friends, or pull four desks together to create a fort-type structure.4

My students are finally being good stewards of our classroom. They get to start every lesson exercising a choice about where they feel like sitting. They get to end every lesson helping everyone out and cleaning up our space.

And to be honest, I don’t want this experiment to end after a week. To paraphrase a wise beyond her years 8th grader: “Well Mr Pierce, Open Space is great, but we couldn’t do it for a lecture. Actually…no, why not? We could do it anytime! Except for maybe a test…”

I’m already thinking ahead to Open Time. I want these kids to need me less and less.

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  1. report card grades and comments due last Monday ↩
  2. a quote in the recent Atlantic Monthly article about education and Teach for America, but in particular this quote said to represent the typical above average performing teacher: “You’re welcome to come visit my classroom, but I have to warn you – I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.” ↩
  3. I like the concept of space here. It is inherently patronizing to decide to “empower” students. Step back and empty the space of your authority as a teacher. Students will fill the vacuum without any need for you to give them guidelines or prompt them to do this or that. ↩
  4. This last one was created by a boy. Surprise. In that same lesson all of the girls were scattered on the floor in two large circles while the boys were spinning around on rolling chairs. Hmmm. ↩
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