You better you better you bet (The Who)

Photo by Austin Distel on Unsplash

At the moment in my school context, there is quite a lot of discussion around appropriate work place environments for teachers.

Brief context: in a fundamental change, all staff on a non-contact must now work in the Secondary School students' Learning Centre (a purpose built space where students do their zoom lessons and use as a study space - in our version of that it's currently temporary accommodation in the gym as our Learning Centre is being remodeled).

Let's delve into this discussion, keeping in mind the advice from Thomas Oppong: Design a work environment that works for you. Are you more productive in silence? Do you work better with white noise? Experiment and design a unique work environment just for you.

Teachers are free to use any space within the Learning Centre zones they wish. The clearly defined zones: quiet areas, collaborative, semi-collaborative.

Some of the culturally centred reasons/aims behind this move: to replicate working environments that students will go into after they leave school; to role model good practice; to improve relationships between Primary teachers and Secondary students.

I've spent this first week of term thinking about effective use of space in our Learning Centre. It's a work in progress but so far, and not surprisingly, I've found I need to be based in the semi-collaborative zones when actively supervising/coaching, but in a quiet zone when on a non-contact.

For some of the teachers, it will also take time to adjust to this new mode of working but, already, after one week, I am seeing positive benefits from this approach and being in a larger space like our gym has already improved the atmosphere in the Learning Centre.

I do understand that some teachers will feel that this idea cramps their style or needs, in that they need a completely silent space, or else they need specialist resources or equipment. 

I would hope they would give this new idea a chance, but I also hope that common sense will prevail and that we can move into a higher trust model where professionals are trusted to make these decisions for themselves.

Whistling men in yellow vans, they came and drew us diagrams; showed us how it all worked out and wrote it down, in case of doubt (The Housemartins)

Photo by Pedro Miranda on Unsplash

Currently, we are chewing over plans for a remodeling of the senior school's Learning Centre and staff workroom.

This part - meetings about what staff want, meetings with the architect and trust members around what the budget allows, considering which ideas from the architect work best and so on, is always a slightly unnerving experience, as decisions eventually need to be made with compromises just part of the process.

At such times, I am reminded of the maxim from Velocity that no good joke survives a committee of six. Basically the  point being that, in education, schools who want to improve, who want to make a gear change from great to outstanding, can't do so via consensus.

One of the joys of working at OneSchool Global is an acceptance that we need to make the best kind of decision at the time. We also learn from the past.

A frustration in some campuses is some cost compromise on acoustics. That has made me very aware of the need in our remodeling for ceiling tiles and wall coverings (including insulation) that absorb the sound of 60 teenagers. 

The bottom line: I can confidently predict that the planning/decision making process will be a relatively short one. In the meantime - consultation!