Classroom Walls: We Don't Need No Thought Control

[proud2BlibKansan]

One of the things I found most fascinating in Dan Brown's Great Expectations School were the ongoing controversies over--of all things--his bulletin boards. There was a lot of fussing about whether his displays met "quality standards"--i.e., were they standardized to the point of monotony?--and a ridiculous administrative smackdown over commercially purchased borders.

It seemed to be another example of something you see in schools all the time--wresting control over minute, irrelevant details, a response to the certain knowledge that you can't control much in an enterprise as vast and complicated as education. Plus, of course, school leaders' need to assert titular authority they may not have earned.

When arguments erupt over minor issues, they're almost always a smokescreen for Big Irreconcilable Problems. You may win the battle over the recess schedule or bathroom passes, even while you're being crushed in the war against generational poverty or onerous high-stakes testing. So it goes. Take your victories where you can get them.

It seems to me that the classroom is the very heart of place-based education, however--a space where a teacher and her pupils must have some investment in the environment, a safe space for personal expression. Diana Senechal has made some good points about why exhibits of identical student assignments can lead to a kind of mental inertia, and how being surrounded by "charts, lists, standards, rubrics, tasks, and reminders" doesn't leave much room for imagination.

more . . . http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2011/10/classroom_walls_we_dont_need_no_thought_control.html

[LuckyLib]

1. Excellent article. The clutter of commercial pablum in some classrooms is

ridiculous. Less is better!

Some great ideas here.