by Jo-Ann Van Reeuwyk with Becca Brasser, John Booy, Mark Ponstine, and Frency Frans

How do we make or miss opportunities to design our teaching spaces as safe places? If we trust that places and pedagogical practices are marked by hospitality, safety, and nurturing, then how much attention should we give the physical spaces themselves? In our investigation of schools, we came upon several instances of “space-making” that struck us as noteworthy examples of how we might think about our own spaces. We think of this as the walls talking to the occupants of the space..

Creating Classroom Space Together

Becca Brasser, teacher at Mustard Seed, speaks to this as she discusses how students work together to create murals: Perhaps your students can create these murals as a community-building activity at the beginning of the term! This might give the students ownership of their space—if the classroom is used by multiple groups of students, many murals could be constructed.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my time at Mustard Seed was directly opposed to everything I thought I knew about classroom design. I came prepared with bulletin board trim, stickers, posters, and more. However, at Mustard Seed the classroom (walls, shelves, bulletin boards, etc.) is empty until the students and teacher decide what will fill it. Sets of books, art materials, types of paper, and pencils are introduced day by day in an intentional way so that when the children enter the room, it is awaiting their participation rather than already being filled with things they had no ownership of. Similarly, the only things displayed on walls are of the students’ or teacher’s creation—so no prefabricated borders or anything else factory-made. Classrooms are filled only with beautiful furniture made out of natural, organic materials (wood and cloth) rather than plastic.

By the time the first six weeks are finished, spaces in the classroom have been filled with books and materials, relationships have been initiated, stories have been shared, work has been displayed, and procedures have been constructed. This is an important part of the year-long process and gives children and teachers equal ownership in the formation of the classroom community and the physical space. After all, what does it say to children when they enter a classroom that has already been decorated and ‘finished’ by the teacher. I truly believe that it’s the teacher’s role to make the classroom into a place for learning and creating; too much visual, prefabricated stimulation can prevent this.

Brasser continues, I spent a day in my classroom this week, experimenting with furniture placement and was struck by the prominent places—the meeting area, the blocks area—that, together, take up about half of the room. The blocks area tends to be a collaborative space for hands-on work. The meeting area tends to be a space for collaborative work with words. I found myself thinking about how I could mingle these two spaces—how to better bring language into the blocks area and how to better bring hands-on experiences into the meeting place.

Later Brasser adds, I [don’t] want to pack too much into a particular lesson. I think that how we treat the physical space we’re teaching in has a lot to do with this. Classroom design and arrangement, storage of materials and the amount of papers/handouts/clutter we find piling up makes a big difference to our spiritual, emotional, and mental ability to grapple with deep subjects—and relationships. That was one of the first lessons I had to learn at Mustard Seed: how to let go of the clutter in order to promote freedom to learn.

Building a Community of Learners

Block building is in some ways a metaphor for what goes on in a child’s learning during the year. Foundations are built, new learning is built upon prior knowledge, each building has visible and not-so-visible contributions from those involved, and once the foundation and strong structure is built, extensions can be added and ‘remodeling’ can happen. Rarely is there a need to totally deconstruct a building, but a fresh start is sometimes helpful. The possibilities for using blocks as a metaphor for our learning and our community are endless and may provide a means for young children to make concrete connections within a very abstract topic.

Current research in education generally supports this perspective in space-making. Learning is enriched when we “publish” our students’ work and when we make clear the process of their growth. In other words, allow the walls to talk!

Making Learning Visible

In Artful Teaching, Donahue and Stuart explain an important “learning framework” developed by researchers who studied inquiry-based learning. They write,

“Making Learning Visible is a learning framework developed by researchers at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, working collaboratively with educators at the Reggio Emilia school district in Italy. Project Zero researchers were interested in how the process of documentation at Reggio Emilia schools was crucial to the inquiry-based and group-oriented learning there and how these ideas could be used in US schools” (58–59).

They continue to explain the potential their framework has across ages and disciplines: “Making Learning Visible can be effective at every age level, in every arts discipline and academic subject matter, and for each member of the learning community in multiple ways. The beauty of Making Learning Visible is that it simply takes the learning that is happening in the classroom and makes it accessible” (67).

Student Involvement in Space-Making

Some years ago, The Potter’s House (a Pre-K–12 school in Grand Rapids, MI) had energy and funding to build an addition to their school. Once the bone structure had been developed and before the final membrane was applied (paint, paper, carpet, and the like) students were invited into the space to draw, write Bible verses, and offer prayers for the school community directly onto the walls and floors using permanent ink. Even though the prayers, words, and drawings are now hidden, administrators, staff, students, and visitors are surrounded by the prayers of those original students. They have all entered, studied in, and been nurtured by the same sacred space. Interestingly, the prayers on the walls surrounding the community of learners mirror the practice the school body has of gathering around someone and praying for them. We caught a glimpse of this after a chapel when the eighth graders circled around the speaker and prayed specifically and intimately for her.

Students Outside the Walls

Beyond the immediate walls of the classroom, The Potter’s House extends the classroom into the community. The walls shift and activity spills out. The walls encompass the neighborhood. Superintendent John Booy describes this space-entering activity: We walk down the street praying prayers of blessing on each house. Some houses we actually lay hands on. We pray for joy, for happy families, for safety.  . . . We also knock on doors and ask if we can pray for the occupants.

As a broader learning community, educators and students can work together, as they have at The Potter’s House, to designate the walls, interact with the walls, and allow the walls to indicate safety, nurture, and learning, as well as pushing students to step into risk.

Changing Space As Opportunity for Student Ownership

The Grand Rapids Christian School board had to decide to downsize a number of elementary schools into one new building. Losing these schools was particularly difficult for the students and families, and transition was not easy. However, planners had the foresight to incorporate several artifacts/objects from the schools that were closing down and place them into the new building.

Images Matter

When students enter, there are touchstones everywhere in the school that honor the various places the students have come from and where they are now learning and growing. Old doors have been recycled and used prominently. Pillars positioned throughout the school display circular mosaics made by the children honoring the new sections in the school they now have ownership of. Murals and student work surround the activity of the students. Pieces of history are made precious in this way, in the same way that the students themselves are considered precious.

Indeed, we find that spaces matter to teachers. Values, virtues, learning practices, and our ideas themselves are embedded in and affected by the places we inhabit, by the walls that surround us. When teachers were asked what elements students recognize as being distinctive to their own teaching, John Booy described the table arrangement as significant: Students would see the tables arranged in a U-shape so that all students can see each other and so that the discussions involve all.

In The Potter’s House, long hallway murals depict founders of the school and other historical moments. Principal Mark Ponstine agrees that images surrounding us matter.

At The Potter’s House the image of a potter holds a lot of meaning. This mural that is on our wall shows Ms. D, one of our founding teachers who passed away from cancer a number of years ago. It also shows some of our first students gathered around the potter’s wheel. The passage from Jeremiah 18 comes to mind, where God tells Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house. The jar that was being molded was marred in his hands so the potter took it and re-formed in into something beautiful. We often use the images and language at school to share about hope and about ‘beauty from ashes’ as we look to mold and shape the students we see daily.

This particular mural is lively, kid-friendly, and encompasses a lot of space. This school also has an entire hallway, a kind of gateway from one section to the next, embellished with images of the Peaceable Kingdom.* Here too the images are friendly, amusing, and welcoming. And they instruct. Intriguingly, there is also a wall/area dedicated to wise words from graduates. Students who have come before are important to current students.

In Jakarta, at Sekola Pelita Harapan, a very large chart in the hallway reads: “Who We Are, Where We Are, and How We Express Ourselves.” It is a daily reminder to students and staff of the importance of community living and commitment to the community. SPH teacher Frency Frans speaks about her teaching space:

I believe that all children are uniquely created on an individual timetable, and each one has a different experiential and cultural background that may influence physical, cognitive, and emotional developmental stages. So, as an educator I feel the need to address these variances in each child. As an educator I have the task of thinking in terms of activities that promote growth and [account for] the needs of each child to help them achieve their maximum capacity. One of the best ways to do so is to establish well-defined centers that are attractively arranged to invite children’s participation and that help children to select activities and engage in learning.

These teachers are convincing. Recognizing that within our institutional spaces, our walls do indeed talk, is an integral aspect in providing safe, nurturing, challenging space.

* The phrase “Peaceable Kingdom images” refers to several famous paintings. 

Work Cited

Donahue, David M., and Jennifer Stuart. Artful Teaching: Integrating the Arts for Understanding Across the Curriculum, K–8. Teacher’s College Press, 2010. Print.