Learning Environment – Montessori Muddle

Eating Frankenfish

Ian Simpson has an interesting article on the movement to reduce the numbers of the invasive snakehead fish more appealing to restaurants and their customers.

[Snakeheads have] dense, meaty, white flesh with a mild taste that is ideal for anything from grilling to sauteing.

…

[But] the fish are air breathers that can last for days out of water. Even when gutted and with their throats cut, they gape for breath, said John Rorapaugh, director of sustainability and sales at ProFish, a Washington wholesaler.

“Once they get to mature size, they are on top of the food chain and are ravenous,” he said.

…

Josh Newhard, an expert on the snakehead with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said it was too early to say what the snakehead’s long-term impact would be on its invaded environment. … “The potential is really high for them to impact other fish species. The fact that people want to remove them from the system is really good,” he said.

–Simpson (2012): U.S. chefs’ solution for invading Frankenfish? Eat ’em from Reuters via Yahoo! News.

My middle-school students are reading Janet Kagan’s short story, “The Loch Moose Monster” as part of our discussion about genetics, ecology and educational environments. This article makes a nice complement.

Should Liberals Homeschool?

Dana Goldstein posts a critique of liberal homeschooling (and, by inference, of private schooling as well).

The crux of her argument is collective (for the greater good); having middle class kids (who often have highly educated parents) benefits the poorer kids in the public schools and thus society at large.

… “peer effects” have a large impact on student achievement. Low-income kids earn higher test scores when they attend school alongside middle-class kids, while the test scores of privileged children are impervious to the influence of less-privileged peers. So when college-educated parents pull their kids out of public schools, whether for private school or homeschooling, they make it harder for less-advantaged children to thrive.

— Goldstein (2012): Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids in Slate

She backs up her argument with evidence (Schwartz, 2010) that mixed income schools show better outcomes. The fact that school funding and populations come from distinct geographic districts, some of which may be rich while others are poor, is a major part of the problem.

However reasonable the argument is for society at large, it’s going to be a hard argument to make to homeschooling parents who choose that option because of how bad they see the public schools as being. She’s not just asking for some shared sacrifice, but for having parents risk sacrifice their kids’ education.

Until the public schools change in the more progressive directions that these homeschooling parents have a problem with, I don’t think she’ll get much traction. For her idealism I’ll give her the last word, but I suspect that she’s got it backwards.

If progressives want to improve schools, we shouldn’t empty them out. We ought to flood them with our kids, and then debate vociferously what they ought to be doing.

— Goldstein (2012): Liberals, Don’t Homeschool Your Kids in Slate

Mobile Classroom

The furniture is starting to move. So far it has just been the couch, which also happens to be the heaviest piece of furniture. Yesterday I helped a couple students rotate it 180 degrees to face the wall, to make quieter, less distracting space. Today we rotated it toward the whiteboard and about half a dozen kids piled onto it for a lesson. I’ve always favored giving students as much control of their environment, and allowing the flexibility of movement, so I’m glad to see that they’re starting to take advantage of that freedom.

While I’m not quite sure why the couch has been the first thing to move there are probably a couple of reasons. One is that, compared to the rest of the furniture, the couch is relatively informal. This, in and of itself might have lead the students to consider it a good candidate for rearrangement, but I think it’s also that the couch’s informality meant that no one sat on it on the first day of class; everyone was at one of the desks (bright eyed, bushy tailed and eager to learn). As a result, no one specifically “owned” that space, and negotiating its movement did not involve a large group of people.

The couch also has the space around it so it’s easy to move without having to rearrange a lot of other furniture. It’s not the only piece like that though.

Now, with everyone piling on for today’s lesson, the couch-space has a much more communal feel. Students are becoming more attracted to it when they feel the need for a break, but they tend to go back to the desks when they need to work. Its population shifts over the course of the class.

It’s nice to see that, so far, the students are using the space responsibly. We’ll see how it develops.

Facilitating Movement in the Classroom

… the part of the brain that processes movement is the same part of the brain that processes learning.

— Jensen (2005): Movement and Learning in Teaching with the Brain in Mind.

I’m setting up a new classroom this year. How it’s arranged is very important to me. Montessori classrooms are designed for open movement and having different things going on in different places at the same time. Unlike last year, I won’t have to manage the entire middle school in the same room for the entire day. Instead, middle and high-school students will come in for two-hour periods for math and science.

Two hours is a long time for anyone, so I don’t expect them to be able to sit still for the entire period. In fact, just like in last year’s middle school classroom, I intend that the class devolve into smaller groups for most of that time. Students will need to be able to move around freely and associate freely, so long as they respect each others ability to work. I’m trying to arrange the room to facilitate that.

So how to arrange the furniture?

I need open spaces for students to walk and move. Eric Jensen has an entire chapter of Teaching with the Brain in Mind dedicated to how important movement is to learning. His focus is primarily on the need to save time for recesses and PE in increasingly regimented school days, but he also talks about integrating movement into everyday learning: energizers to wake kids up; stretching for more oxygen; and so on. I certainly know that I do a lot of pacing when I’m trying to think.

David Walsh also sees movement in the classroom as particularly important for boys.

Adolescent boys can have five to seven surges of testosterone every day. … And because testosterone is geared towards quick release, adolescent boys are prone to follow any impulse that might release stress. [p. 62]

…

Some experts think that making students sit still at a desk all day isn’t good for either sex, but girls are better able to tolerate it. Boys are more likely to get frustrated by school and loose interest. [p. 100]

— Walsh (2004): Why Do They Act That Way.

So no rows of desks. Instead, I’ve tried to make different work areas.

There’s one big area with a set of tables along three sides of a rectangle facing the whiteboard; students can be inside or outside of the rectangle depending on their needs.
Another area is centered around the couch, which may seem highly desirable, but I’ll be curious to see how they use it to work.
Toward the back of the room, there’s a solitary, larger-than-normal desk for a larger group that need space from the big set of tables.
I also have a smaller table near the window, that I envision would appeal to smaller, quieter groups, or even individuals sharing the same table.
And, finally, there is a bank of individual work spaces along the back wall.

That’s the plan, anyway. Classes have not started yet, so we’ll see how it holds up when it meets the ~~enemy~~ students. I am always happy to let them rearrange things, but most often they don’t seem to want to spend the time and effort.

Making Text Easier to Read

Christian Boer, who is dyslexic, has come up with a new font designed to make text easier for dyslexics to read. There are a number of changes to the letters themselves, such as making the bottoms heavier, enlarging the openings, and making similar letters look more different. But, Boer’s website also offers advice on how to lay out text: separate paragraphs with space; avoid right justification; use columns instead of having text across the entire page, and so on.

Unfortunately, the Dyslexie font is not yet available in the U.S..

When I was choosing the layout for this blog, I was aiming for something that would be easy and enjoyable for me to read; I tend to be a little picky about my reading and writing environment. Interestingly, many of my own preferences align well with the ones noted above, but there seem to be a number of improvements I can still make to improve readability for everyone. Abigail Marshall has some additional advice on Web Design for Dyslexic Users.