Dorothy Zemach

This was a good time for me to think about my ideal classroom, since I am now preparing to
spend three weeks teaching in Libya without any idea what my classroom might look like. I
know that I'll have about 30 students, and that I'll be at a university, but that seems to be about all
that I can determine. So with this Thank Tank question, I decided to list (in order of preference,
more or less) what I hope I'll find when I get there.

“The value, therefore, of this kind of exercise—dreaming of the perfect classroom—is to

help you think about what’s important to you and why.”

1) I'd like each student to have a square, flat desk of an adequate size. No sloping surfaces, no
strange right- or left-handed configurations. The desks should not be attached to their respective
chairs, and they should be easy to move around. I find myself doing a lot of activities that
involve flashcards or large sheets of paper or game boards or posters, and small desks that cannot
be pushed together are tough to work on. It would be nice, if I have 30 students, to have 36 of
these desks and a chair for each one. That way, I can put students into groups and sit with each
group in turn, if I choose.

2) The room should be neither too large, which makes the class seem unpopular, nor too small,
which makes it difficult for students to move around and move furniture.

3) The room should be a comfortable temperature, perhaps even slightly on the cool side, to keep
students from getting sleepy.

4) An adequate number of windows, please, because natural lighting is easier on the eyes.
However, we'll need good window shades, should we want to watch a DVD.

5) I want something large to write on, though I'm torn between a traditional blackboard and a
whiteboard. Chalk dust is not great for one's lungs; but then neither are the chemicals in
whiteboard markers. As long as we're dreaming, then, I'lll take a non-toxic version of either one.
Naturally, an adequate supply of either dustless chalk or fresh markers should be available.

6) Let's have a CD player that never skips, located in such a way that I can easily reach it, but no
one will ever trip over its cord. It can sit next to the DVD player that plays DVDs from any
region. When I taught at the American Language Center in Rabat, Morocco, there were speakers
affixed above each door that you could hook your portable cassette player to. They were perfect
for playing background music; I find that a little ambient background noise can encourage
students to speak up more easily and also to speak more loudly, and thus (often) with better
pronunciation. The over-the-door configuration dispersed the sound in a nicer way than having a
portable machine on a desktop. So I'll throw in an order for one of those.

7) A laptop computer and projector would be next, and the projector would never say "no signal
detected." It should also be safe to leave this laptop in the room at all times, rather than needing
to carry it in and out every day.
8) I'd like a little cabinet somewhere in the room that has extra miscellaneous classroom
supplies--those things you don't necessarily think to bring to every class but somehow wind up
wishing you had, like tape, a stapler, 3 x 5 index cards, scratch paper, paper clips, extra pens and
pencils, and colored markers.

9) No matter what subject I'm teaching, I'd like to have a library in one corner with extra reading
materials, including things like magazines and short stories. On those occasions when a few
students finish an activity very early, there would always be something for them to do. It might
even encourage students to come to class early.

10) Though I've only rarely experienced this luxury, I'd like the classroom to be my own, so that
I can bring in my own posters and hang student work on the walls. A nice light wall color and a
generous section of cork board would help with this.

Of course, I've taught in classrooms that didn't have all of these things -- or even any of these
things. In a way, this exercise reminded me of a conversation I had recently with an Iranian
professor of writing who asked me at a conference what the research said was the perfect number
of students to have in a second language writing class. Before I even attempted an answer, I
asked him how many students he had in his classes, "One hundred," he said. Well, whatever the
correct answer is, I know it's not 100. However, even if this man could have gone back to his
institution with some sort of proof that, say, 12 students was the ideal number, it wouldn't have
helped him. The question he should have been asking was, "How can I cope with 100 students in
a writing class?" since that was his situation.

The value, therefore, of this kind of exercise -- dreaming of the perfect classroom -- is to help
you think about what's important to you and why. If you identify something as very important,
and you don't have it, you might be more likely to strive to find a workaround. Most of us will
have to fall back on "If you can't be with the one you love, then love the one you're with," but it's
good not to fall into complacency (or despair) and stop working with what we have.

Dorothy E. Zemach is an ESL materials writer, editor, and teacher trainer from Oregon. She is a
frequent plenary presenter at conferences, a columnist for TESOL’s Essential Teacher magazine,
and has written over 15 ESL textbooks, including Sentence Writing,Paragraph Writing,Success
With College Writing, and Get Ready For Business(Macmillan) and Writers at Work: The Essay
(Cambridge University Press). Current interests include the teaching of writing, EAP, business
English, testing, and humor in ESL materials and the profession.

>>Back to the top

Peter Viney

The sky's the Limit? I'm going to be crass and stick entirely to optimizing the physical
environment. For its era, it wasn't far off when I was working at Anglo-Continental in England,
and around 1972, the classrooms were already being converted to a horseshoe layout for better
interaction. By 1974 stereo speakers were installed to improve sound. Every classroom had a
large framed world map and UK map on the walls. We had dry wipe boards rather than
blackboards (to save our clothes and lungs from chalk dust) and whatever visual aid sets or
wallcharts we wanted. We had language labs, private study listening centres, and a TV room
with cameras.

The best classroom I have seen integrating electronics in a physical environment was in the
Netherlands. Students were seated in a horseshoe arrangement, on swivel chairs. Behind each
swivel chair was a language-laboratory console which ran round three sides of the room, so
students could do five or ten minutes listening or lab work and swivel back to do class work.
Does anyone remember language labs? They worked with most people. Unfortunately about
10% of people were technophobes to a degree where a lab with headphones caused panic and
confusion. The flat surface behind each chair - still the Netherlands classroom - also meant
students could swivel to write or read something quietly, rather than relying on wobbly palettes.
The downside, I have been in two swivel chairs that broke under me, so modern health and
safety regulations might ban the swivels. A chiropractor friend tells me that swivel chairs are bad
for the back too, instead of moving your back muscles, you swivel and your back stays in a fixed
position for too long. Sit on a chair with four legs, is the advice.

“I spent years advocating that every classroom should have a TV screen so that video could
be incorporated seamlessly into lessons without lugging equipment or moving students
around the school.”

My best classroom in terms of design was at the Anglo-Mexican Institute in Guadalajara. It was
a language school, designed for just language teaching. The classrooms were hexagonal and
slotted together like a honeycomb with open areas between them for lesson breaks. The physical
shape meant that students could be on five sides with the board on one, naturally forming five
sixth of a circle. A circle is said to be the most democratic classroom design, but I don't like
chairs arranged in a complete circle, because students next to the teacher can't see well. While a
circle is great for discussion, It's poor for the teacher-centred phases of the lesson or video or
whiteboard work. The hexagon with the teacher on one wall is the best I've been in.

I spent years advocating that every classroom should have a TV screen so that video could be
incorporated seamlessly into lessons without lugging equipment or moving students around the
school. In the early 90s I believed that the next big course we wrote would have a one or two
minute video sequence with every lesson. It didn't happen, and video has stalled. It's used less
than it was ten years ago, which is bad (and sad). I haven't™t used an electronic whiteboard, but
I have used the lower-tech version, which is a laptop with PowerPoint (or Keynote, the Mac
equivalent) and DVD capability connected to a projector. It's weird, but a DVD/hard disc is not
actually as good as video tape for language teaching. We experienced this writing the scripts for
the Wallace and Gromit series where we had to write new dialogue to fit existing mouth
movements in the animation. On DVD, because the compression system works by sampling the
differences between frames, it's far more difficult to hit a single frame than it is with video. One
of the later VHS machines with a rotary slow-speed forward/rewind control allows you to move
the picture a single frame at a time. Nowadays, I'd definitely want a whiteboard, but I'd like a
VHS input as well as DVD if that's technically possible.
Then comes size of class. I'd have fifteen chairs (three on each of my five walls) and no more. I
started teaching with one teacher to eight students, moved to one to thirty, then one to twenty-
four. I've taught one to one, and I used to teach 140 in a room, daily too. The ideal size for me is
twelve to fifteen, but sixteen to twenty isn't bad. With more students the degree of personal
attention falls markedly. Under twelve? It can work superbly if you're lucky, but the dynamics
are often spoiled by one or two personalities or isolated students who don't fit. Once you get over
twelve, the group's large enough for people not to feel "outsiders" as they may in smaller, tighter
groups.

Natural light is vital. The hexagonal classroom wasn't great for this (some sides joined to other
rooms). But it had high landscape shape (narrow, horizontal) windows and it was in the heat of
central Mexico. I hate being in windowless rooms under fluorescent tubes, it affects student
mood, concentration, and vision. So sufficient natural light would have to enter the room to make
me happy. The sky is our limit, and I would like to be able to see it. Perhaps like art rooms in
schools, it should be north light to avoid glare and bright sunshine. So my ideal would be either a
free standing hexagon or one with only two walls joined to others. Artificial light should be with
expensive daylight bulbs.

Finally, I like a table for the teacher. A small plain, sturdy table, not a desk. Desks are barriers. I
stand for the teacher-centred phases, and sit for the discussion /interaction phases. However,
sitting on the table is an excellent halfway position (though culturally insensitive in some
societies!) because you can see and be seen more clearly than when sitting in a chair, and it's less
dominating than standing. I'd want enough space to be in front of the table most of the time. Oh,
and one more thing -- a decent ceiling height, so often lacking in smaller language schools in
Japan. It gives air and space.

Peter Viney is the co-author of IN English:, Survival English / Basic Survival, Handshake,
Grapevine, and Streamline. He has written thirteen video courses, and has recently finished work
on a major video self-study project. He lives in Poole, UK. Peter and Karen Viney’s website is at
www.viney.uk.com

>>Back to the top

Marc Helgesen

Actually a colleague and I got to do just that a few years ago, and we almost missed the chance.
Our department’s language lab – which usually sat empty, full of 20-year-old equipment
designed for 50-year-old methodology– was scheduled for renovation. The school planned to
have the Sony labs guys come in and put in the latest version of the same old, same old. When
my co-teacher and I heard about it, we told our department we wanted to transform the room into
something we actually needed: a communication room. After all, we have a lot of conversation
classes. Just like you wouldn’t dream of asking home economics teachers to teach cooking in a
regular lecture hall, we thought we deserved a room designed to facilitate communication.
We started with the desks. Instead of desks facing the front, we arranged them in islands; two
students on each side, facing two other students. The four are perpendicular to the front of the
room. Students can easily see the teacher at the front of the room. But the idea is that most of the
time students will be talking to each other. And there is plenty of space between desks for the
teacher and for students to move around. The room just feels much less teacher-centered.

We got rid of all those old-style

language lab machines that you
use to play “pilot to co-pilot”.
But, of course we wanted to use
media. We put all the things you
would expect – internet-linked
computers, a decent stereo.
DVD/video, video OHP and a
projector with a screen at the
front, and four large plasma
monitors in the four corners of
the room, suspended from the
ceiling. Learners can watch the
screens from nearly anywhere.
Again, the front of the room
ceases to be the focal point.

Naturally, we carpeted the room.

OK, we had to fudge a bit on this
part. We told the school that,
since it is a communication room
and lots of people would be
talking at the same time, we
needed carpeting to absorb sound.
Which is true. But what we didn’t
tell the school was that we really
wanted to make it a “no shoes”
room, just to make the
atmosphere more relaxing. And
after it was up and running, I
noticed that when the weather is
warm only about 25% of the
students bother putting on
slippers. Most of us are in
stocking feet or barefoot. We chose a blue carpet (the color in these photos is not great), based on
information from The Owner's Manual for the Brain which suggests blue slows the pulse and
lowers blood pressure and is conducive to studying, deep thinking, and concentration. We
consciously tried to build in relaxation. Relaxed learners learn more.

We wanted to transform the room into something we actually needed: a communication

room.

We left about three meters of open space in both the front and back of the room. It makes
physical movement activities easier, something kinesthetic learners like myself love (click here
and download Let’s get physical, a pdf of ELT warm-up activities.).

The next thing was art on the walls. I’ve always found it strange how bare the walls of most
university classrooms are. If you went to someone’s house and there was nothing on the walls,
you’d start to think, “Hmm. Strange. Psychotic, maybe?” But our classrooms, which are
supposed to be centers of inspiration and creativity, commonly lack the human touch that art
brings. We started with travel posters and now have delightful Tanzanian tinga tinga paintings,
Maori art, and Papua New Guinean masks adorning the walls.

The school was pretty skeptical when we wanted to put in a coffee/tea bar. We wanted nothing
fancy, just a hot water pot and coffee and tea. But the students sure appreciate it and it goes a
long way to make the room feel different than all their other classrooms. So do the aroma therapy
burners and the zabuton mats in the corner – if you and your friends prefer to do that group work
on the floor, fine. Posters we change regularly with affirmations are useful, too. Affirmations
lead to positive self-fulfilling prophesies.

On a shelf in the corner of the room is what I think of as “the joy of sets”. We have class sets of
colored pencils, magic markers, scissors, dice, ohajiki (like flat marbles), and sets of other things.
Teachers of kids will think, “What’s so special about that?” Very true. But in a university, it is
really unusual. (Actually, if we want to talk unusual I could get into the stuffed animals, the yoga
mats. etc, but you get the idea.).

I do know that I am extremely lucky to have a classroom like this. But I wanted to share it with
you. This is not some radical educational experiment. It is a classroom in a rather conservative
Japanese university. And “the sky’s the limit” was never an issue here. The classroom was a
whole lot cheaper to build that the school had planned. And it went from being rarely used to
have many teachers specifically requesting it. So, if we could do that here, who knows what you
can make happen at your school? And, in something I consider indicative of the success of this
room actually designed for what we do, during lunchtime and those rare time slots when it isn’t
being used for a class, students take it over to hang out. It’s their space.

Marc Helgesen is professor at Miyagi Gakuin Women's University, Sendai and adjunct at
Teachers College Columbia University MA TESOL Program - Tokyo. He is an author of over
100 articles, books, and textbooks including the English Firsthand series and has lead teacher
development workshops on five continents.

>>Back to the top

Curtis Kelly
This month’s question is: “What things would you change about your classroom if the sky were
the limit?” I guess we are being asked to do a little environmental engineering to raise the
learning potential? A year ago I would have suggested putting the desks in a circle, using natural
instead of artificial lighting, or replacing the PCs with Macs; but after a year of listening to Brain
Science podcasts, I knew the answer instantly: I’d take all the desks out, and… are you ready? …
put in beds.

That’s right, beds. Some things we’ve discovered in the last ten years make it clear that the
current dearth of learning comes from physiological deficits, including the biggest, baddest,
learning disability of them all: sleep deprivation.

We have long known that sleep has an impact on cognitive function – learners that stay up all
night lose everything they learned the day before – but the general public still misconstrues sleep
as an option. Counselors might be telling students that an hour of sleep is worth more than an
hour of study, but as Dr. Ralph Pascualy points out, most people still think that not getting
enough sleep is merely a matter of “toughing it out.”

Even if we get lots of sleep, eat well, get along with our parents, and do everything else
leading to mental fitness, sitting long hours in the classroom pretty much cancels it.

It is not. We now pretty much know that the first night of sleep is when learning goes from short-
term into long-term memory. People tend to think of sleep as down time, but if you could take a
peek at your brain while you are asleep, you’d be surprised. For most of the sleep cycle, you’d
see neurons cracking away far more furiously than when you were awake. During the slow-wave
phase of sleep, your brain replays everything you learned during the day, over and over again,
locking in new connections through an amazing process of genetic change. And there’s more: in
the following nights, your brain reorganizes this new learning to integrate it into your existing
knowledge. We learned from the late HM that memories roam for 11 years before finding
homes, but even after one sleepful week, we move from just knowing to understanding. And
even more: we also solve problems in our sleep. In one study, students were given math
problems with a hidden shortcut for solving them. Three times more students figured the shortcut
out after 8 hours of sleep than those in the non-sleep group.

No sleep, no learning. And drastically. An all-A student who gets a little less than seven hours
sleep on weeknights and a little more than seven on weekends will drop from the top 10% of her
class to the bottom 10% of those who do get sleep. With a few all-nighters, she’ll start showing
the same symptoms as someone with Alzheimer’s. Dr. John Medina, author of Brain Rules, puts
it simply: “Sleep loss means mind loss.”

Are your students getting more than seven hours of sleep? With cell phones, Web surfing, and
the teen-normal hormone-regulated shift towards owlishness, probably not. When I ask my
students how much sleep they get, six hours is the most common answer. Unfortunately, the data
shows that only six hours of sleep for five nights straight leads to 60% loss in performance. That
is SIX-AUGHT, ladies and gents! In terms of impact, no graded reader or info gap can even
come close.
Nor should we underestimate naps, which contrary to popular belief, are not a side effect of
insufficient sleep. NASA found that pilots who napped for 26 minutes performed 34% better
afterwards, and other studies have found boosts like these last up to six hours.

So, beds it is… Um. Wait a minute. Some hands have

popped up in the back. You, sir. (inaudible) I understand
your point. What we really need to do is to get them to
sleep more at home. . . Ma’am? (higher inaudible) Yes.
You’re right. My beds-in-classrooms solution prevents the
deterioration of learning potential; it does not augment it,
but please, I’m not done yet. There is one more thing I am
putting in my classroom: treadmills!

Even if we get lots of sleep, eat well, get along with our
parents, and do everything else leading to mental fitness,
sitting long hours in the classroom pretty much cancels it.
It is not what we are built for. As Read Montague puts it,
our brains “evolved on legs, and that makes all the
difference.” For millions of years our ancestors walked 10-
20 kilometers a day. These strapping athletes actively
worked the environment to survive, while those who just
sat passively got eaten. It makes sense then, that our brains
evolved to work optimally when moving, not when sitting, and science has found just that. Most
of it has to do with blood flow.

Our brains burn up blood-supplied glucose at ten times the rate of other body parts, and pump
out glutamate and other deadly toxins. As long as our blood keeps pumping through, these
neuron busters get carried away in the oxygen, but if not, they accumulate. Cognitive function
suffers and we age prematurely.

But there is more. When we exercise, our brain also releases neurotransmitter mood shapers like
dopamine, norepiniphrine, and serotonin. Even just a little exercise gives learners better focus,
higher motivation, more confidence, and less impulsiveness, in other words, the Holy Grail of
classroom behavior.

And more: with exercise, our brains release neurotropins, like BDNF (Brain Derived
Neurotrophic Factor), at two or three times the normal level (and marijuana-like cabbinoids too).
Harvard’s John Ratey calls BDNF “Miracle Growth” (a kind of fertilizer) for the brain. This
chemical helps everything related to brain growth happen, including the increase of stem cells
that become new neurons. Exercise is, by far, the single most powerful way to maintain and
increase the brain’s plasticity, which means the ability to learn and change.

A recent study with 5000 children over three years found that 30 minutes of exercise, twice a
day, led to higher grades across the board, especially for girls, and especially in the subject area
of . . . brace yourself . . . math, which is tied in directly to executive function. Or consider the
case of Mikey, a 10 year-old who took Ritalin to control his severe attention disorder, ADHD.
One day, he went to the school principal – actually, his Mom– and got permission to do daily
exercise instead. He swam his way to recovery, and then, on to fourteen Olympic Gold Medals.
His name? Michael Phelps.

It does not take a lot of exercise to make oneself smarter. Even short walks help; even couch
potatoes who fidget do better. So how are we using these new discoveries to improve education?
We are not really; in fact, just the opposite. We are cutting PE classes and recess times, buying
buses to haul students, and plopping our kids down in front of computers at home. This is neither
human nor humane. As John Medina writes: “I am convinced that integrating exercise into those
eight hours at work or school will not make us smarter. It will only make us normal.”

So that’s it, my fellow educators; beds and treadmills to make happier, healthier learners who all
score in the top 10%.

Curtis Kelly (EDD) is a specialist in adult education, writing and speaking instruction, and brain-
based learning. He has given over 250 presentations and written 17 books, including the Writing
from Within and the Active Skills for Communication series.

>>Back to the top

Chris Hunt

Hmm, if the sky were the limit – what an odd phrase. Why limit ourselves to the sky? What
about other dimensions, diversions, directions? I really like the sound of what Marc and his
colleagues were able to create, and I think Curtis’s idea of replacing desks with beds and
treadmills is a blast, but I guess my heart’s desire would be to get rid of the classroom altogether.

The notion that learning can and should be organised into chunks of time in an enclosed space is
more than antiquated, it is oppressive. As John Taylor Gatto wrote in Dumbing Us Down :

“Was it possible I had been hired not to enlarge children’s power, but to diminish it? That
seemed crazy on the face of it, but slowly I began to realize that the bells and confinement, the
crazy sequences, the age-segregation, the lack of privacy, the constant surveillance, and all the
rest of the national curriculum of schooling were designed exactly as if someone had set out to
prevent children from learning how to think and act, to coax them into addiction and dependent
behavior.”

If I am to have a classroom then I would like it to be a respite from the regimes that so
many children seem resigned to.

So, I guess, rather than having a classroom I would like a resource centre. There would be books
and games, soft toys and software, computers and musical instruments, cooking and sports
facilities, workshops with tools, gardens, wilderness, and time. Time to explore, time to create,
time to relate, and time to do nothing at all.

What a fantasy! I operate out of a two-room trailer home sandwiched in a tiny car park between
two houses. The nearest park is the haunt of tramps and flashers. Children’s schedules are so
tight that quite often there is only a single hour on a single day of the week that they can use for
learning English. The world is a madhouse we have locked ourselves into and we have lost the
key.

My theme song in these columns is choice. If I am to have a classroom then I would like it to be
a respite from the regimes that so many children seem resigned to. I want my space to be a place
where children can exercise a little free will. I also want to help them realise that if they want to
learn something that means giving it more time than the 40 to 60 minute blocks their schedules
dictate. This means having materials available for them to use at home. It means having
materials available that they will want to use at home. It may be impossible to do without the
classroom physically, but one can do it mentally.

According to Wikipedia the American Society for Training and Development maintain that more
than 40% of corporate training now takes place online and not in a classroom. I wonder if we
will ever see the day when over 40% of schools are organised without grades, without grading,
without fixed lessons, and without classrooms. I wonder.

Chris (Hunt) works with his wife in a trailer home. The school can be seen here.His website is
available at www.wisehat.com

>>Back to the top

Chuck Sandy

Although I have my favorite classrooms, I have learned over the years that the search for the
perfect room is a pointless quest. Even in the best rooms there is always some feature that has to
be worked around, and like a renter in a less than ideal home, you do what you can to cozy up
the place and make it a comfortable nest for you and your students. Yet even then, the fix is
nothing that should be considered permanent.

A classroom that’s been nudged into a cozy home by one group of students very often doesn’t
quite suit the next group that comes along -- and so the process begins again. New students move
in and recreate the space all over again. This is because a classroom, no matter how seemingly
just right it may be, is just a physical space until inhabited by a group of learners and their
teacher. Only then does it come alive and it does so in different ways with different groups at
different times. Even the best of classrooms is just a room without students in it.

What makes a classroom ideal is not what’s in it, but who’s in it and how they feel when
they’re in it
To see a bit of what I mean, go visit your favorite classroom at night after everyone’s gone. Walk
into the room, sit down, and listen. What you’ll find is that there is nowhere on earth quite as
quiet and empty as an empty classroom. If you sit long enough, though, memory will invoke the
voices of students, the sounds of learning, and images of classes long gone. Yet, without these
memories, no matter how ideal the room may be, you’ll find that without anyone in it, it’s just a
room unworthy of special comment. An empty classroom, even one with the best possible
features, is just dead static space -- a memorial to classes and students now elsewhere, a place
that hoards silence in anticipation of classes and students to come. What makes a classroom ideal
is not what’s in it, but who’s in it and how they feel when they’re in it.

Without any prompting at all, I asked a group of my students to brainstorm features of their
favorite and least favorite classrooms. Only rarely were physical features mentioned. Obviously I
could have steered the discussion in that direction, but what rolled out naturally was so
interesting that I just let it happen. Here are the top ten responses in the order they were given:

In my favorite classroom …

I get to sit with my friends.

there’s a lot of group work.
we get to talk about interesting stuff.
it’s warm and sunny.
there’s space to spread out.
everyone laughs a lot and has fun.
the teacher is cool and never yells.
the teacher listens to me.
I feel excited and I learn a lot.
I’m happy being there.

In my least favorite classroom …

the mood is not good.

I feel nervous.
the teacher talks all the time.
the teacher is always telling us why we should listen and how we should act.
the seats are hard and it’s cold.
there’s no place for my stuff.
there’s nothing to look at.
we use computers all the time but in a boring way.
I don’t understand what I’m supposed to do.
It has nothing to do with my life.
I don’t have any friends there.

Interestingly, I conducted this brainstorming activity in the best room I have, but no one
mentioned any of its superb features or technological enhancements. No one mentioned the
lovely small seminar rooms we have. No one mentioned the beautiful multimedia center except
in a negative sense. Except for decent seating, storage space, and comfortable temperatures no
one mentioned the physical aspects of classrooms at all. The student focus was on what
happened in the classrooms and how they felt about that. This is an essential point. In the eyes of
most students, the ideal classroom is not some well-designed wired space inside a school, but
instead can be any place where they feel welcome, challenged, connected, and happy.

Still, most schools view facilities in a top-down institutional way, building new buildings and
facilities without much regard for the people who will be using them. This reminds me of an
anonymous quote I came across some time ago, about how designing classrooms and school
buildings without thinking about what goes on inside them is like rearranging deckchairs on the
Titanic. Never mind that the ship’s going to go down. Enjoy the band. Schools that misdirect
their focus in this way are likely to sink in these troubled times. Yet, building continues.

Of course it’s important to have well-lit and comfortable learning facilities that are temperature
controlled, safe, and clean. It’s also nice to have classrooms that are connected to the wider
world via the various forms of both established and emerging technologies. Still, such rooms are
just rooms unless the real focus is on supporting teachers whose focus is on making students feel
connected to each other, engaged in what they are learning, and comfortable enough to take the
risks that learning requires. This is the kind of teacher my grandmother was and the kind of
teacher I aspire to be.

My grandmother taught in a one-room

schoolhouse in the early part of the last century. I
have a photo of that schoolhouse room right here
and whenever I look at it am always amazed at its
lack of anything comfortable. It had no heat
except for a woodstove. Students wrote on slate
tablets, and sat on hard wooden benches next to
classmates ranging in age from six to sixteen.
There were no non-essentials, hardly even

enough textbooks to go around. Sill, many of the

students who graduated from that little
schoolhouse kept in touch with my grandmother
their entire lives and looked back fondly and
thankfully on the rich and caring foundational
education they received there.

Once when talking to my then 98 –year-old grandmother about this she said, “it doesn’t matter
where you teach, you know, or even what you teach. The secret is to make sure that all your
students feel loved, especially the unlovable ones. If you can do that, they can learn anything,
anywhere.”

It can happen in a one-room school, in a room in a drafty old teahouse, or in a completely wired
learning environment at the most up-to-date university. It doesn’t matter where. It only matters
that it does -- and this is what we should work at making possible. If the sky was the limit, and it
is, I would focus less on classrooms and redirect resources earmarked for building projects on
faculty development and student enrichment. Only then would providing classroom amenities
and luxuries make real sense. Until then, the deckchairs get rearranged and the band plays on.

Chuck Sandy is a teacher, teacher trainer, ELT author, essayist and poet who has most recently
coauthored the Active Skills for Communication series with Curtis Kelly. He also recently
completed work on a second edition of his popular upper-intermediate level series Passages
Second Edition with Jack Richards, and is coauthor (with Jack Richards and Carlos Baribsan) of
the junior / senior high school level series Connect. He is a frequent presenter at conferences and
schools around the world where he most often speaks about the joys of project work and the need
for materials and practices that promote critical thinking.

Visit Chuck (and Curtis) on their Facebook page