think:lab: It's Willy Wonka's World; I Just Teach There

A colleague of mine called me recently:

"Dude, did you know that all of the furniture in your classroom is out in the hallway?"

Result: a temporary gulping on my part, followed by his telling me the maintenance team had done a monster carpet cleaning for me. Ah!

As I pulled the chair/desk bad boys back into my CR, figuring out how to reinstate the right 'fan' row configuration so the kids can simultaneously face forward and make eye contact with everyone, I began to marvel at the serendipitous art displays found on the underbelly of every desk. Gum -- one of the great no-no's of CRs with carpet -- has a funny way of making it past candy security gates no matter how hard we kabash our students' efforts:

Note:

While it most likely goes without saying, there isn't a school desk in the US (perhaps beyond) that doesn't have gum underneath it. This is hardly a reflection re: any single school, let alone mine.

While I'm far from a prison guard about its existence, I dig why no-gum rules exist, even as another part of me adores the Willy Wonka-like artistic result. Makes me wonder if a coffee table book of similar student artifacts would sell.

Yesterday, my school's headmaster, assistant upper school director, and middle school director swung by my classroom to say hello, ask about my summer, and inquire as to why I have a vintage WWF wrestler action figure standing inside an antique bird cage near one of my bookshelves. I told them, "The students will be given the entire school year to solve that riddle. Extra credit will go to the kid who figures it out, so I can't tell you."

Given that I only just recently inherited a classroom of my own, much of my non-travel time this summer has been spent trying to design a better-than-average physical learning environment while simultaneously adding my own quirky stamp of personality to give my kids a quasi-intellectual scavenger hunt throughout the year as they look around.

Everything -- no matter how odd or unexpected (as far as teacher rooms go) -- will be an intentionally positioned double entendre or offer a hidden message related to the work we'll investigate and my challenge to them as learners/human beings.

Even more important:

I'm going to challenge my kids to seek the unexpected literary connection or metaphor in the real world. And any artifact they bring in, I'll proudly display in my classroom funhouse of tangential design selections.

Right next to the classic "Hang in there" cat-claw in the tree branch poster.

(wink)

***

Note:

I'm serious on the wrestling action figure in bird cage riddle, the joyful opportunity for EC, and the need for me to keep the solution it hush-hush now, BTW.

A photo of the contraption will go up in the coming days/weeks, along with snapshots of other classroom space vignettes, too.

Oh, and it appears I'm not the only teacher type exploring space from a what can I craft in a DIY fashion (as opposed to my previous school planner/architectural career examples). A certain middle school history teacher/podcaster extraordinaire, and current Missouri Teacher of the Year, just emailed me about his own plans to share photos/videos of his classroom space.

Can we sense a innovative DIY classroom space Flickr meme in the not so distant future, sportsfans? If so, I want all the glory in terms of blame if it goes viral.

(wink, again)