New Year, New Goals: The Standing Desk

-

I am just a few days into the new school year and I am already loving some of the big changes I made this summer. I am hoping this momentum lasts because right now my classroom feels energized, positive, and creative when students are in the room.

The Standing (& Rolling) Desk



I am obsessed. It all came about because I wanted to make sure I was more engaged with my students during class. We teach on block schedule and I found myself sitting more than I liked during class last year. It made it so students had to come to me for help and I felt like that made the classroom focused on me as the teacher and not as focused on the students as I wanted my room to be. I want my students to never feel uncomfortable asking questions, when I am sitting behind a giant desk are they as willing to raise their hand and call me over?

I noticed a few other teachers had standing desks but I just couldn't justify spending money on something I wasn't 100% sure about, what if I needed to sit at my desk to get information for a student? What if I needed to deal with confidential information?

Then a neighbor was getting rid of an old projector cart and the plan was formed. I put a document camera, my clipboard, a pencil cup, and my surface tablet on top and all papers I need throughout class on the bottom shelves. It rolls around smoothly and is small enough to move between seating areas. I also got a wireless mouse to plug into my desktop computer so I can easily control what is projected on the screen in my class (it is still linked to my desktop computer but I want to find a way to link it to my Surface).

My legs are killing me but it has been awesome. My old desk faces the wall now, freeing quite a bit more space for students to work. Because it faces the wall, if I were sitting in it, my back would be to my students so there is zero desire for me to return to that seat during class but I still have a workspace for my prep period.

I am not stationed in one area in class, I am able to move locations through class as students are working or as I am presenting instructions or content, and while it might just be because it's the first few days of school, my classroom feels more energized. Having my tablet on top of the cart allows me to still follow up with urgent e-mails, submit attendance, and handle confidential student information without students seeing.

It seems like a silly little change when I first tell people about it but I love the ability to move around the room more freely and be more available to my students. I feel more engaged in my classes because I don't have an escape behind the desk.

Later this week, I plan to share how my first few days of flexible seating are going. Are you trying anything new with your classes?

- Mrs. Byars

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you so much for commenting! You can also reach out to me on twitter: @mrsbyarshistory

Popular posts from this blog

Hacking the System: Using a 4 Point Scale with a Traditional Online Gradebook

-
Image
When I first started down the road of "how do I make sure my grading system supports learning and is not just a tool for communication" I found my biggest challenge was not creating lessons or building proficiency scales, it wasn't student buy-in or parent buy-in, it wasn't admin support or all the things you would think would stand in the way of such a foundational shift in practices. No, it was something entirely out of my control, the biggest challenge was trying to figure out how to get the digital grade book I had to use per my contract to play nice with a 0-4 scale.  Why a 0-4 Scale? The 100 point scale is a dream killer and it is full of opportunities for our own bias to trickle into the grading process. Maybe Johnny and Sally did the same level of mastery but Johnny had an attitude when completing it, how likely is it that Sally will get an 85% and Johnny will get an 80% while those few points might seem like nothing, that can add up. The bias
Read more

Why I Am Leaving Canvas LMS for Google Classroom

-
Image
I consider myself a team player. A few years ago when our district announced that the Learning Management System they were supporting was going to be Canvas LMS I stopped using Schoology and started learning as much as I could about Canvas LMS. Right away I could see the potential, there was a ton of back end data that Canvas was collecting, it was designed with mastery and personalized learning in mind, and you could complete customizations of your pages with just a tiny bit of knowledge of basic HTML. So I committed to using Canvas as my class website and used it to host all the blended assignments I was creating. I spent hours reading the incredible Canvas LMS community learning all the things it could do that could potentially make my teaching more engaging, more personalized, and more about meeting the needs of my students.  You see, Canvas does have some remarkable features - you can create quizzes that pull from a question bank so no two students have the same quiz,
Read more

Formative Assessment Isn't What You Think

-
Image
When planning for a Standards-Based classroom you follow a clear series of steps : 1. Pick your priority standards and rewrite them in student-friendly learning objectives. 2. Unpack those standards to really understand what they are asking students to know and do. 3. Build rubrics or proficiency scales to help make the learning objective accessible for students and to create a clear understanding of how mastery will be measured. 4. Build your assessments using those rubrics. 5. Create your learning path from introducing the learning objective to assessing the standard that includes a lot of feedback and formative assessment. 6. Make a plan for intervention and support. One of the most daunting elements of a Standards-Based classroom is the idea that feedback needs to happen consistently for students to be able to improve on the learning objective. We know a grade on its own is not enough to help students learn from their mistakes or to understand where they need to impro
Read more