New School, New Beginnings.

My husband and I moved to southern New Hampshire in the fall of 2018 while he was in grad school. I got a job at a new school and was excited to bring communicative language-teaching practices to the students there. Before I met any of the students, I was introduced to my classroom. It was the very epitome of institutional: no windows; ugly, unwieldy desks; dirty-beige walls.

I couldn’t do anything about the lack of windows but I was determined to make it feel a little less soulless. Without asking anyone, I hauled all the desks out into the hallway and began the transformation. After a couple of days, a lot of sweat, and a lot of Blu Tack, I had a classroom that felt a little less cold, and a little more welcoming.

Before.

And yet, what was funny was that after getting rid of the desks, you will notice (in the AFTER video above) I immediately put the chairs back in rows. Just goes to show how hard it can be to shake those ingrained ideas of what a classroom should look like!

It took me about a month to realize that not only were desks unnecessary, so were chairs in rows. I opted for a semi-circle, which was easily adaptable for games such as write-draw-pass (opposite).

After.

Not in rows! Shocking :)