When making decisions in the classroom about what to keep and what to discard, a teacher needs to consider several questions. So how does one declutter their classroom and still honor that culture? Reflecting as a Tool for Decluttering Because my students are the ones doing the stapling and the scribing, they have a hand in creating an environment that adds to the culture of the classroom. My room is a growing portfolio of student input, and as a result, we have a classroom environment that is as dynamic as the middle school brain. It’s an environment filled with posters of brainstorms, rough drafts as well as final artifacts, norms constructed collaboratively with my students, and project-based learning walls that morph with each unit and the growing lists of student-generated questions about the projects. I display more about the process than the product of what my students have done. My current walls honor the fact that learning is messy. There are board games and art supplies, recycled borders to be used another year, and boxes of worksheets that were over-copied or printed out before a computer program was made defunct.īut it’s important to also give a nod to what works. There are old and retired textbooks, and cables from equipment now warehoused. There are student exemplars representing years of samples.
The items inside reflect quick sweeping-under-the-carpet kind of organization. When you open my cabinets, there’s little order. I have no pride-I’m happy to hand it over. I’m more likely to hit an 88-degree angle when creating a corner with a bulletin board, and I admit that I sometimes outsource that job to a student just rarin’ to fix my attempt. There’s an ebb and flow of seating at all times. Sometimes the video game chairs are huddled into a collaborative circle, and sometimes the easy chair has been dragged toward the makeshift window seat. Sometimes the beanbags are propped against the wall, and sometimes chairs are rolled into a group near the classroom library. I have flexible seating, which is wonderful, but it causes a shift in what one sees every day. My classroom used to be the main office, so I’ve repurposed the cubbies used in the mailroom as shelves for supplies. I have a section for makerspace materials. There’s the area of equipment, punctuated by the wires and cords spilling from my Chromebook cart. I have my room divided into different purposes. As a result, I’m also reflecting on my pedagogy. So this year I’m looking more critically at my clutter. And just as a closet at home can be full of clothes that are never worn, a cabinet can be full of student work collected over the years that no longer applies to current units or skills.
Flexible seating honors student choice and voice, but those pillows can also take up tons of room. Posters, for example, might make a room feel inviting or engaging, but having too many can distract students. Research tells us that the classroom environment is vital, and recent reports show that our rooms can have too much of a good thing.
Lately, however, the obsession with decluttering our homes has gotten to me, and I believe those same principles can be used in my classroom. It was “organized chaos,” to quote Ray Bradbury. For years I joked that my room was a picture of my brain merged with those of my middle schoolers. Anybody who knows me would question whether I have the qualifications to talk about decluttering a classroom.
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