HEATHER
MIGDON
Diary #4
A
Classroom to Call Our Own
Praise be to every deity in existence – Ms. Migdon and her students have a classroom! After enough successful pleadings with parents to call the school to voice their outrage that their children were being educated in an auditorium, the powers-that-be decided I should be moved.
Once a room belonging to the reading specialist (who went AWOL two months ago) was cleared out, I was notified that I could move my class into the recently vacated space. For someone who has been forced to clear out of my "classroom" for every assembly or assembly practice, being given sovereignty over my own room is like a belated Christmas present.
Despite my wanting to give my students as much consistency as possible (considering the many moves and changes they have been through this year), a new room (complete with desks!) begged for a new seating arrangement.
Of course, as every teacher knows, creating a seating chart is a fine science, especially when the teacher chooses to seat the children in cooperative groups. Are behavior problems separated? Does each group have an ability balance? Is there at least one responsible classroom citizen in each group to keep the others on track? Is my small number of boys (8) dispersed appropriately?
Surely, letting the students have any input into the design would be paramount to anarchy! So I resolved to plan the new arrangement after the students left.
An apple for Adonis
Luckily, two boys agreed to stay after school to help me move the desks into the new arrangement. I decided to draw the new classroom layout on the board, while Brandon and Adonis waited quietly for instructions.
Adonis is the child in your class who always thinks what he has to say to his neighbor is infinitely more important than what you have to teach – and then becomes dumbfounded when you reprimand him. As I already told him he would be moving, he was quite interested in what I was putting on the board. He said, "Ms. Migdon, where will I be sitting?" In answer to his question, I did something my current night-class professor recommended. I actually asked for his input. "Where do you think you should sit, Adonis?" I let him know that it would be bad for him to want to sit next to someone he would feel compelled to talk to. I was prepared for him to try to convince me to sit him next to some of his best friends, in which case I would have replied, "Well too bad! I'm the teacher, and I make the rules!" Instead, he looked deep in thought. After a long pause, he said, "Put me with Delonte and Beverly. I'll never want to talk to them." And he was telling the truth. Delonte and Beverly are my least popular students, and because they are so quiet, no one ever wants to talk to or sit by them. In fact, I was delighted to have a volunteer to share their space.I was impressed with Adonis's maturity, but I was more impressed with how he immediately started to tell me other things about the classroom that he had observed.
"Ms. Migdon, maybe we should move the computer so that they face another way. If they stay like they are, we will be distracted when people use them during lessons."
"Ms. Migdon, why don't we put the rug in the literacy center?"
Adonis was not being pushy or bossy; he was taking ownership of his classroom. I only hope my other students can manage to do the same.
