Sometimes facilitating class discussions is not a matter of getting students to talk, but of moving the furniture out of the way. Organizing furniture resources is a key component to designing a class. The problem is sufficient enough that I actually woke up today, still wrestling with it, which means that the enigma puzzled me even in my dreams: how to turn a classroom of twenty-five students, who sit behind long rectangular tables that are arranged in rows of two that face front, into a circle for class discussion? ....

I like to have my students face each other when they talk about readings. I break them into groups to accomplish this all the time, but I also like to do a full class circular pattern once in awhile. It's a great equalizer. There's no way, really, to avoid meeting other student's eyes, and everyone's accountable for what they say. There are creative exercises that I've come up with based on the circle.

To move the long heavy tables would be time consuming and arduous...and they're so large that I doubt the circle would take shape very well. There's also the classroom on the floor beneath us to be concerned about... when students drag around tables and chairs, it sounds like elephants are trouncing around upstairs, tooting their trunks.

At least the tables aren't nailed to the floor as they are in some rooms. I believe the tables and chairs arrangement on my campus was engineered to facilitate learning and discussion, but working within these pre-ordained structures is sometimes a challenge and I often don't have any opportunity to change rooms or any time to set up the room in a special way. The tables in my film classroom, for example, are arranged in a giant W with two rectangular rows before it. The W allows students to sit across from one another to chat, while at the same time facing front to watch the lecture. It's a convenient solution to dealing with the problem of shifting teacher-centered/student-centered approaches to material. But it's an unnatural way to watch movies.

There's also the problem of walking into a classroom, and finding an alternative furnishing pattern, because the teacher in the section before you got bold and rearranged the room. If the majority of students are already seated, you hesitate to have them move things. This bothers me the way finding someone else's markings still on the board does. I expect a clean slate. And so if I ever rearrange a room, I typically arrange it back to the way it was before I leave...which doubles the time spent furniture pushing rather than teaching and learning.

Aside from doing small group work and encouraging students to twist in their seats and face one another when they discuss, I think the best solution I can come up with for my desire to get in a circle is to take students completely out of the room and go outside or go to some public space where there's room to gather in a cluster on the floor. I hesitate to do this, because of noise, distractions, cold weather, student dress, and the lack of basic needs like a blackboard. At the University of Oregon, I once capitulated to my writing class' desire to have class outside and a drunken homeless person came up to us, sat down next to a young lady, flirted, and then started asking if anyone in the circle had a joint. That's unlikely to happen where I am now, but other surprises could happen without warning.

Another option that would minimize waste of classtime by moving things might be to push the tables together and form a big square. But then there's the problem of too much distance between students across a long table.

A final solution might be to have students stand or sit on tables somehow... that, at least, might lighten things up a little. Or make them uncomfortable. But mixing it up once in awhile is part of my method -- not to generate discomfort, but to push them out of comfort zones where thinking becomes as habitual as sitting in the same desk every day. Creativity takes risk and sometimes a shift in physical habits can make one stumble onto a new idea they hadn't considered before.

There are probably plenty more options that I haven't written about here. I welcome suggestions by clicking on comments below.

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