Y'all, my classroom looks different now: flexible seating

This is my fifth year deskless! I distinctly remember myself, a colleague, and a student carrying desks out of my room to a trailer. We got our workout that day. We've had chairs for the last four years - just chairs - but this year I'd been reading a lot about flexible seating, and I got to thinking:



1. Students need choice. They get little choice and little trust from their teachers during the school day.

2. I'm a fidgety person. I HATE chairs. I like to curl up, sit on things, cross my legs, etc. I have a lot of kids who are the same way.

3. Sitting in the same position all day is really pretty hazardous on your back and your joints.

4. If we expect students to be able to consult what they need on any given day, we need to begin to extend that kind of trust and training to them at this point in their lives.

5. Desks, and even chairs, are't necessarily comfortable for all our kids - short ones, particularly large ones, kids with certain kinds of disabilities, etc.

So in that spirit, I've moved to flexible seating. I have stools (short and tall), a padded rolling desk chair (which they love), sit-upons in various thicknesses, a beanbag chair, blue chairs, rolling chairs, buckets with padded seats on top, and a couch. There's also a table (there are two in this picture because I had some papers set out) by the window with three chairs for students who really feel like they need a surface.

For the first week of class, kids were not allowed to sit in the same type of seating/place in the room, so they'd have to sit with new people, assess what kinds of seats work with them, and try out a variety of perspectives. We talked about appropriate sitting positions and behavior on each of those (no lying down, for example, or turning chairs away from the part of the room), various expectations, and why each of those might be preferable. Now periodically, probably once a week, I ask the kids to find a new type of seating they haven't used recently, so that it doesn't become constituted. Part of the idea is to discourage cliques and to encourage wider community, so I also ask them not to sit near someone with whom they've recently sat.

How to Handle Behavior Issues

Some seating is more conducive to sleeping than others (the table and the couch in particular). They know they get one warning before I ask them to reseat themselves.

The same thing with chatting - if they are sitting with people non-conducive to their focus, they get one warning before I ask them to reseat themselves. They do get choice in how to reseat themselves. They can, in fact, pick up their seat (except the table and the couch...) and move it elsewhere in the room if that seat is what's working for them.

Don't the Seats Get Moved?

Oh, they do. Daily. We do pairs activities, group activities, large circles, and some kids just like to move their seat somewhere else. So I've got gaffer tape on the floor where each of the seats should end up at the end of the period, and that tape is labelled with what seat should end up there.

How Does Your Room Stay Clean?

I secretly teach kindergarten and have a jobs chart. Jobs are:
seats
boards and markers
trash
costumes
general

Two kids do each job each week. We change on Mondays. In the last two minutes of class, I ask those ten kids to execute their jobs, so all water bottles get pitched, costumes get put back where they go, markers aren't left on the floor, fidget tools go back in their box, etc.

Writing?!

I've got nine foldable tables. They're round tables that seat 4-6. Their legs fold up, and they also fold in half. I keep them at the back of the room. If we're doing something that really needs surfaces, we can haul those out. Otherwise, I keep a box of clipboards on top of my file drawers, and I have a lap desk, and they're welcome to get either one if they feel the need, without asking.

Where Did All This Come From?

I made the sit-upons and the buckets. I've had the buckets for a long time - I used to use them for art supplies, but now I have pretty colorful caddies. The materials - the fabric, the foam, and the wooden stool tops (which I got from Home Depot for like five dollars each!) - came to less than 100 dollars for six sit-upons and six bucket seats. The couch I got for free (check facebook marketplace, y'all. there's so much that's cheap. this came from a kindergarten teacher), and the blue chairs came from the school. I already had the stools and the beanbag chair (which, I actually, I also made a couple years ago, and that was pretty cheap and pretty easy as well). I have a director's chair that's lying in wait until I can fix it... we'll see how long that actually takes...